


only dust will gather

by Anonymous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Binge Drinking, Blood and Gore, Conspiracy, Gun Violence, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Legal Drama, M/M, Mafia NCT, Minor Character Death, Minor Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Lee Jeno, Murder, Organized Crime, Past Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Na Jaemin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:07:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mark is a vigilante by night, Hyuck is his law partner by day, and Yukhei is just a dude running from the Triad in Hell’s Kitchen. Daredevil!AU
Relationships: Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 90
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> really this was born out of a half crazed need to combine takeoff yukhei w the motorcycle and my daredevil mark agenda so here we go <3

Witness protection really ain’t all that. Or at least, the one Yukhei was in sucked.

This witness protection program was so broke that they didn’t even send Yukhei anywhere new. He didn’t even leave the state. They just moved him from 43rd up to 57th. Not even the full 10 blocks to leave Hell’s Kitchen. Not even off the fucking island.

“Just hang in there. We’re going through some restructuring, so our state program is limited. But we definitely need your testimony for the case,” his liaison, a kind man named Qian Kun, had said that first time they met at the Chinese embassy on 42nd, for his pre-screening.

Kun was nice. He didn’t take himself too seriously, as qualified as he was. He was still subject to the same bureaucratic limitations as everyone else but took extra care to be compassionate. Yukhei was especially anxious about, you know, getting killed for what he saw at work that day. He appreciated Kun’s attempt to care.

“Do you know how long that will take?” Yukhei’s leg was bouncing, and it wouldn’t stop.

Kun smiled tightly, but with a second’s lag. It was the same face Johnny made that time Yukhei lost an entire string of regulars for them solely because he got distracted talking to a friend on the street while some random ass teenagers punctured his tires. Yukhei had even sent a :( in his apology text, but Johnny had still made that face and docked his pay.

“We don’t really have a timeline, yet. We’re working with the FBI on this, but it’s a big case. You can’t take down just one ringleader; you have to destroy the entire framework. And even then, it won’t work, and the Triad will resurface in another city. Since the government is still gathering evidence to prepare for court, that will take a few weeks, at the very minimum.”

Yukhei’s heart sank. He’d forgotten to pack his favorite vibe. It was going to be a very lonely few weeks with his hand. What a nightmare.

.

.

.

They’d met up in person a second time later that same week at a nameless corporate coffee shop. This really wasn’t super secure at all, which Yukhei found out the hard way.

The meeting itself was simple. Kun just handed over a file of documents that outlined his next steps to relocate and a new driver’s license, credit cards, burner phones, apartment keys, etc. It all would have been cooler if Yukhei was moving somewhere that was more than 1 mile away, but alas. Yukhei stuffed it in his Adidas drawstring bag petulantly.

“Thanks,” Yukhei said again sincerely, right before they pushed through the revolving door to step out onto the street. Then the glass window next to them shattered, and gunshots were ringing in his ears. Yukhei hit the ground, immediately cosplaying a worm. Kun got out a gun from his inside jacket pocket. Had that been there the entire time?

“Yukhei, we need to leave. Let’s go!” Kun yelled, crouching down on his haunches to see him. They were hiding behind the cars that lined the side of the street, and the shots were definitely coming from one of the opposite side buildings.

Yukhei’s vision swam, greying out. Kun helped him up, a hand on the small of his back. It was comforting yet unfamiliar enough to set him on edge. He could register that he was moving, but all the words and motions felt tinny and far away like he was underwater. They made it to a sturdy black Volvo, and Kun pushed him in, wheeling out before Yukhei’s brain could catch up.

Kun was clearly rattled; he kept checking his side mirrors for tails. His forearms were tensed, and he kept running a hand through his carefully styled hair. He looked a little crazed, honestly. Still hot, though, Yukhei’s libido noted helpfully.

Yukhei slid down in his seat until he couldn’t be seen from the outside. This wasn’t really great for his stupid long legs, but whatever.

“Fuck, I’m so, so sorry about that,” Kun sighed. He slammed a hand against the steering wheel in frustration.

Yukhei gawked. “Um, yeah. No worries. This isn’t even the first time I’ve been held at gunpoint this week, LOL.”

“We need to upgrade your security detail,” he huffed.

Yukhei’s heart was pounding, and the adrenaline or lack of brain cells made him ramble on. “Yeah, the first time was behind the restaurant, obviously. And then the second was at the local CVS, where a completely unrelated robbery was going on. This dude wanted smokes for free. And then I made the mistake of telling him the cigarette high sucked compared to others—which it does—and then the cashier had to deescalate that shit and toss him some bait. And then there were the damn ghost pepper chips. That fuck just stole them from my hands just to be petty. And then—"

“Is there anything we can do for you to make that up? Anything at all, you name it,” Kun said.

Yukhei stopped to think and then smirked. He was about to traumatize this man into paying for some new toys.

.

.

.

.

.

Taeyong sucked at gossiping. He loved to gossip as much as the next guy, but he was a priest. The hot confessions he received weren’t meant to be shared. God didn’t look too kindly on sinners like him, and he was already on thin ice.

During his years as a priest, Taeyong had gotten all sorts of confessions. He’d heard everything from, “Father, I cheated on my husband” to “Father, I can’t stop masturbating” to “Father, I had sex before marriage.”

Christians were sinners, but God was relatively forgiving. His brother, by comparison, held grudges for eternity.

Confession and penance. Guilt was a horrible burden to bear, and no one wore it better than the Catholics. Taeyong didn’t really get interesting confessions, and truthfully, he didn't care much for breaking down the facts of the sin. He was there to provide emotional support and then direct the actual depressed ones to proper therapy. He wasn’t there to solve problems logically.

But if he had to choose, wrath was by far his favorite one to unpack emotionally. It had always stood out to him more than the other six cardinal sins. Wrath never started fully formed. It always began as an injury to the self and a subsequent desire for retribution. In a quest for justice, because no single man is ever qualified enough to choose for someone else what is fair, revenge and spite follow in its wake.

And there were so many different types of wrath, too. There was the instant gratification of an equal return, and there was the slow, calculated kind of devastation. There was subterfuge and point-blank revenge. Wrath was arguably a synthesis of the other sins, and it wasn’t often he had to hear about its aftermath.

But this one came to confession regularly, not just annually. Mark Lee had been a regular at this church for years, as had his older brother and mother in the years before their fatal car accident. Taeyong knew his voice oh so well. His singing voice was spectacular, and Doyoung, the fundraiser organizer, was always asking him to return to sing with their choir for each Christmas special.

Taeyong wasn’t an idiot. He knew exactly who was on the other side of the confessional. He just didn’t understand the how: the mechanics of how Mark had gotten into everything. As much as he wanted to move past it, he was beyond baffled at Mark. But a priest’s role in confession wasn’t to understand and rationalize the sin; it was to absolve it and lay out the life beyond it.

“Father, I killed a man” and “Father, I crave violence” were more of Mark’s lexicon. That, and a lot more filler words. Like, yeah, um, for real.

It had taken a while to pry those ones out of him. Taeyong struggled with him; that much was certain. He was dealing with the guilt of a murderer. Mark was a God-fearing man, same as him, but there were more layers to him. This was a man who’d confessed before even committing the sin.

“I’m not seeking penance for what I’ve done. I’m asking forgiveness for what I’m going to do,” was what he’d said the first time.

“That’s not really how this works,” Taeyong had told Mark then. You didn’t necessarily get bonus points for the time it takes you to confess after the sin. “There’s no atonement if you haven’t sinned.”

Mark paused for a moment. “But is there a clarification between intent and follow-through? Is the act the sin or is the desire to act the sin itself?”

Taeyong hummed. “Both,” he said. “Depends on the context. And it depends on who your God is.”

“I keep wondering if there’s any limit to how much I can be forgiven for. Because some sins are definitely worse than others, so what’s the bottom line?” he asked.

The bottom line was your humanity, Taeyong finished internally. The further Mark strayed, the closer the Devil would become to him than God. Dare to play with the Devil, and then that’s what you’ll become.

There was some shuffling on his end, but Taeyong couldn’t really see through the wooden barrier. 

“Wrath will consume you, and you know this. No matter what you do, it will not erase the pain of your past. Are you sure you want vengeance? It can seem a lot like justice at times,” Taeyong mused.

Mark huffed, annoyed. “If I don’t, then what happens? Do we just stand by and let corruption and greed ruin everything for those who don’t deserve it? As much as I want to live a good life, I can’t be ignorant of the world we live in. Every part of our lives is touched by these people in power. We don’t even know all their names or faces, but they change life as we know it without our consent. They operate in the shadows, but they ruin entire families and governments.”

“You aren’t wrong, but aren’t you just one man, though?” Taeyong asked. “What can you do about all that?”

Mark laughed mirthlessly, and for a moment, he wasn’t humble or kind at all. “Someone like me can do a lot more than people think, Father,” he said.

And there it was again: that darkness he saw in him. Mark was unapologetic. Something in him had shifted beyond accommodating the world as it is to forcing the change he sought by himself. Where the law failed him, this version of him began. And he did not hold back.

.

.

.

.

Compared to the whole almost-dying bits, life in the program was quite dull. Of course, still rank with paranoia, but dull in comparison. Yukhei didn’t have anyone to talk to that knew him, really. The only people he spoke with were Chenle, the cashier and somehow owner—he was so young; it didn’t make any sense—of the only grocery store Yukhei was allowed to shop at now and Kun, his handler.

“Wassup, Chenle?” he boomed as he walked in. A customer to his right fiddling with nail polish flinched.

Chenle sighed wearily and screamed back at him from the counter in his dolphin voice. “The ghost pepper chips are in Aisle 8!”

Yukhei flashed him a thumbs up, but Chenle's eyes were glued to the STAR1 magazine he was flipping through. This kid was amazing.

Everyone else he’d been mindlessly interacting with were strangers on Reddit. r/legaladvice and r/podcasts were surprisingly informative about his current situation.

He’d essentially quarantined himself in the new place, which wasn’t bad at all. He had a TV, food, internet access, Xbox, and Pornhub Premium. What else did anyone need? He was perfectly fine! Time was largely irrelevant; he woke up whenever he wanted to, and he had nowhere to be and no appointments to be late to. It was easy for the few weeks to be simply eaten away.

But he wanted to call someone so bad, though. No Renjun. No Yuqi. No Jungwoo. No contact with his family. Yukhei knew it was for their safety, but it still hurt.

It was like that time Yuqi dared him to take 100 acupuncture pins as a part of a running bet on his pain tolerance. “Oh, please, I’ll be fine,” he said. “How hard can it be?” And then he ended up owing Yuqi $20 when he broke after 50 pins. How he felt wasn’t something he could use sheer logic to willpower through, as easy as that would make it.

(What he’d give to hear one of Renjun’s bored sighs right about now. The world.)

His new life was comfortable but empty. There were no people in it to make it special, and it was unbearably, neomu lonely.

Yukhei kept forgetting to ask Kun about the case regularly. He’d intended to ask whenever they checked in, but Yukhei’s attention span absolutely could not handle it. But after a few weeks and five reminders to himself, he remembered to ask.

“Any updates?”

“Sorry, none yet.”

Which was fine. After all, Kun had told him it would take time. Only the same thing happened when Yukhei remembered to ask another two weeks later, and then again, another month after that.

Something was definitely wrong. First, his libido had almost fizzled out entirely by then, and he was only jerking off, like, once a day. And whatever he was getting was coming out super watery and thin. (Something to maybe get checked out, but ehh.) And second, the attempts on his life had stopped. It had been months since the last one.

Maybe Johnny just thought he was dead. Yukhei low-key wished he was, considering how many times he’d popped a boner in front of the man at work.

And yet, the seed had been planted. Yukhei simply had to know what was going on, or he’d never know peace. He couldn't not know. And by then, there really wasn't any doubt left in his mind: he had to go back to the restaurant, the place he originally ran from. 

.

.

.

The trouble, Yukhei supposed, started whenever he decided to buy that stupid Ducati.

Yeah, it was red, and it looked cool. But it made it seriously easy to pick him out in a crowd. And it was a terrible getaway vehicle. Yukhei had saved up all the money he’d made delivering for a local Chinese restaurant, and he was so proud of himself for being responsible that he blew all those savings on a new motorcycle.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Jungwoo sighed over the phone when he told him. Jungwoo was his old college roommate, but they’d both ended up becoming actual friends after they stopped living together.

“Hey! It’s, like, a solid investment. I’m investing in myself and my own work!” Yukhei cried.

As far as that investment went, it seemed like it was paying off at first. And then things went to shit one Saturday night just as he finished his shift and went in to clock out.

“Hey, I finished almost everything except this one address I couldn’t locate. Think you might have missed a number or something—”

Yukhei froze in his tracks. He’d come into the kitchen through the back; he almost never did that.

It was late, past the closing time. But even despite that, there weren’t any of his other coworkers there. The kitchen was clean, full of large old heavy-duty stainless steel. All the soup pots needed to be thrown out, but they absolutely wouldn’t be, because Johnny and everyone else was cheap as shit. Or so he thought.

Johnny and some other men he didn’t know weren’t looking at him, but away at their walk-in refrigerator. Yukhei knew for a fact that all the tempura came out of there, but from where he stood by the door, he could just see inside.

There wasn’t any food. Just stacks and stacks of cash from head to toe. Like from Johnny’s head to toe.

No takeout place that cut corners on buying proper woks made that much money. Yukhei felt an intense wave of dread. He fumbled to take a picture with his phone, but then in the process dropped the huge metal delivery box with a clang.

Johnny whipped around. “Hey, you can’t be here,” he started, but the man at his left immediately cocked a gun, flicking off the safety. Oh, holy fuck. Yukhei bolted, letting the back-door swing back behind him.

Yukhei heard gunshots hit the door, and felt his heart stop. That could have been him. His Ducati was parked right outside. He scrambled to turn it on and flip the kickstand.

Oh god, where the fuck was his helmet? Fuck, fuck, fuck. He couldn’t drive without his helmet. Renjun would kill him if he didn’t. Ah, fuck it.

The engine finally kicked into gear, and Yukhei sped, tires screeching along the alley. Another bullet ricocheted off a dumpster he just passed. Red was such a conspicuous color. Why had he ever picked it out? What a horrible getaway ride, honestly.

Yukhei heard another yell behind him, but he didn’t look back. Yukhei skid gracelessly into the street and just sped and sped and sped. He couldn’t dare to look back until his heart stopped racing and his ears stopped ringing.

What the fuck had just happened? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Yukhei was overwhelmed with a peculiar kind of nostalgia biking into the area. The witness protection program hadn’t had nearly enough of a budget to lend him a rental car, so he was limited to using the same flashy red motorcycle he’d blown all his money on before. He was afraid he might be recognized because of it, but Yukhei was invisible just the same. Truthfully, the neighborhood hadn’t changed that much at all. The same businesses were up, the same people owned them, and the same routine likely plagued them all too.

The only thing that had changed it seemed was Yukhei. It had only been a few months, but Yukhei couldn’t shake off the way he saw his neighborhood now. It was no longer safe to him, and each shadow appeared darker and taller than it ever was before. He couldn’t ever be comfortable, because the danger was right there. It wasn’t just talk when Death was right here at his doorstep.

What had Yukhei even expected to see by coming here? It wasn’t like Johnny would come out waving a banner that screamed, Fraud Here!

“Fraud!” a strangled voice screamed. Yukhei frowned and headed down the mini-street at his right to investigate the sound. He hid his Ducati behind a dumpster, as out of sight as he could. He ducked his head as he crouch-walked closer and hid behind a set of three trash bags. Four, now including him. 

“If you don’t shut the fuck up,” a man in an apron growled and shoved another man into the brick wall again. The man gave a pained cry—definitely the voice from before—and sank to the ground, clutching a wounded arm.

Johnny. That was Johnny, Yukhei realized with a start. He had filled out since Yukhei last saw him. He’d gotten beefier like he’d been fed ramen with actual vegetables.

“You think you’re so smart, huh?” Johnny snarled at the crumpled figure. “When will you understand leading you here was so fucking easy, so think about that before you run your mouth with what little you think you know. You’re. Not. Fucking. Funny.” Four more times his head hit the brick wall. “Fucking supers,” he spat.

“You can’t get away with this,” came the broken reply. Yukhei couldn’t see them that well from his angle.

The sky was dark, and there was no one that would help within miles. Yukhei was frozen behind the pile of three heavy-duty black trash bags. Was this what Yukhei’s reality would have been if he hadn’t moved out of his old place? Forget the Chinese mafia; Yukhei would rather die than work a night shift.

“Oh, I will. You just won’t live to see it,” Johnny promised darkly.

Yukhei’s blood ran cold. Fuck. Johnny’s lisp had always been cute, but now it was scary too. Yukhei’s heartbeat was pounding in his head. He shouldn’t have been here at all. He didn’t have the time or space to rush back to his motorcycle. It was at this moment he realized he fucked up. Coming back here had been a terrible idea. 

The man lunged up to jab at Johnny again, but he dodged easily and swung at the man’s stomach. From this angle, Yukhei could now see the other man was wearing a half-mask. There was a sickening crunch, and the masked man doubled over. Johnny held both his shoulders, kneed him and shoved him angrily back to the ground, absolutely unforgiving.

Johnny reached for a handgun inside his belt and aimed carelessly at the crumpled man. His finger twitched on the trigger, but the gun recoiled with a click. He tried to shoot again but to no avail. “Fucking bullets,” he yelled frustratedly. He took it out on the figure and kicked him once more in the stomach.

Johnny wagged the handgun at him. “Stay down,” he warned. He gave the figure one more scathing look and went back inside the warehouse to search for bullets or other people, Yukhei didn’t know.

Yukhei found himself crawling forward on some instinct. Oh, God, someone had to help. Someone had to help him before Johnny returned to render him a dead body.

The man in front of him was lying in a whole puddle, but it was too viscous to be water. He was drowning in his own blood, Yukhei realized with a chill. Yukhei couldn’t see his face through his black mask, but he knew him from the news.

“You’re him,” breathed Yukhei. “You’re The Man Without Fear.”

The man coughed up a bubble of blood through the mask. Yukhei hoped that was a yes.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna get you to a hospital, before Johnny comes back. I’m gonna get you out of here.” They needed to move quickly. If Johnny or anyone else came back, it would be to get rid of a dead body.

He wasn’t even built like a thug. He was tiny, even for Renjun standards. The papers hadn’t mentioned this at all. He had cuts and scrapes all over his body, so much so that the blood almost made the already black of his outfit and mask impossibly darker.

Even through a black shirt soaked in gore, Yukhei could see the outline of his biceps. Yukhei swallowed. Was he really attracted to a dying man? God, he was so bare minimum. What the fuck.

As gently as he could, he helped the bleeding man up to hobble the fifty or so feet over to his bike. The man gave a ragged breath, arm over his shoulder. Yukhei set him tenderly onto the cycle in front of him so he didn’t fall off. “Here, take my helmet,” he offered.

The vigilante laughed weakly and batted it away. Another spurt of blood erupted, spewing from his side. Shit.

“Which hospital do you want to go to?” Yukhei asked him. There were two places equidistant from where they were.

“No. No hospitals,” the vigilante grunted. Maybe he didn’t have insurance?

Yukhei struggled to think clearly; his brain was starting to shut down. “Fine, just hold on and don’t fall off, okay?”

Because of the mask, Yukhei couldn’t see his whole face, only his savage grin over a dripping bloody mouth. It didn't put Yukhei necessarily at ease, but it was proof he wasn't dead yet. Yukhei glanced at the back entrance of the restaurant concernedly. And if Johnny came back?

He looked back at the vigilante, but he had passed out for real, slumped forward on Yukhei’s bike. Damn it. As clouded as his head felt, he knew they had to leave now. They couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

He revved it as quietly as a motorcycle could—so not at all—and sped out of the alley into the streets in classic Yukhei style, awash with déjà vu. It was just him, the same red Ducati he ran with then, and an extra vigilante this time, you know, just to spice it up.

.

.

.

Yukhei sighed. He was probably breaking some cardinal rule of witness protection, but he had nowhere else to go. Instead of calling the police, he decided to drag this guy into his new apartment.

He was so light that it was no trouble carrying him up the few flights of stairs. Yukhei couldn’t believe this dude had technically murdered people: he was paper in his hands. The real trouble was figuring how to not leave an incriminating trail of blood. So far, Yukhei hadn’t thought of any other excuse than blood play, which was equally humiliating to explain. The stigma around even light vampirism these days, yeesh.

Yukhei dumped him on his couch and rummaged around his kitchen for a first aid kit. Removing the mask was probably a big no-no, but if there was a time, it was now when he badly needed medical help. Yukhei lifted it off gingerly.

He didn’t really know what he expected. Certainly not someone that pretty. He had a healthy shock of hair, thick and dark. It was matted down with sweat, but still soft to the touch. His eyes were closed, but his eyelashes made feathery shadows over his cheekbones. Even with a cut lip and wounds all over his body, he was heart-stoppingly beautiful. What the fuck: was that why he had a mask on? So people weren’t blinded by his beauty? What a benevolent king.

Yukhei took his sharpest kitchen knife and sliced the vigilante’s black compression shirt open down through the middle. He worked on piecing him together slowly, taping and bandaging each cut at a time with gauze, disinfectant, and Dora The Explorer Band-Aids. There were some hastily self-done stitches from a previous injury on his side that had split: this was causing the most blood loss.

Yukhei lost his mind to autopilot, occupied wholly in the motions of his hands and the logical run of his brain in checking each part of this injured body. The vigilante was lucky he hadn’t been shot. Removing bullet fragments would have been beyond Yukhei completely.

Yukhei had just set water on the side table and covered the man with his second-favorite Transformers blanket when he passed out from sheer exhaustion, his head on the edge of the couch cushion, just inches away from a very cute, very dangerous vigilante.

.

.

.

.

.

No walk of shame had ever come close to the way Yukhei felt in the morning. “Um, hi,” Yukhei said nervously, scratching at the back of his head. Was he supposed to offer him fruit or something? Did vigilantes eat?

“Yeah, uh, hi,” the man croaked, having just woken up too. He looked down at his hands and his cuts. “How did you know how to do all this?”

“ROTC in college. I dropped it quickly because I couldn’t do mornings, but yeah, we all learned basic first aid there,” Yukhei said.

“This wasn’t basic. Thank you,” he said sincerely.

Yukhei floundered and waved a hand haphazardly. “Oh, you know. No problem,” he mumbled.

“How did you know the man?” the vigilante asked.

Fuck, he’d heard that? Yukhei scrambled for an excuse as he walked over to his pantry for dry Cheerios to munch on. “I, um, what do you mean?”

“You said his name was Johnny. And don’t bother lying, because I can tell from your pulse,” he warned.

Yukhei took a deep breath and settled back into the couch next to him, box in hand. “He used to be my boss when I did delivery for their front-end restaurant,” he said.

“And what did you deliver? Drugs? People? Money?” he demanded.

Yukhei spluttered. He hadn’t even considered human trafficking.

“What did you deliver?” the man growled, leaning forward to press Yukhei into the couch with a hand on his jugular. Damn, he had almost forgotten how he had an actual murderer in his apartment. Yukhei was starting to feel a bit floaty, like when he edged himself on end.

This all was highly unnecessary; he hadn't even planned on lying. “Uh, money only on the way back. Fried rice and wontons, mostly. Disappointment, too. I wasn’t very good at it, though. I kept losing a lot of customers,” he babbled on.

The vigilante barked out a short laugh, letting up on Yukhei’s throat. Yukhei instantly missed it. “How are you even still working there?”

“I’m not,” Yukhei explained. “I had to go into witness protection. I didn’t even get my last paycheck,” he whined. He hadn’t had anyone to complain about this to before, especially not someone still straddling him for absolutely no reason.

“Could you, um—” Yukhei gestured with his hands a bit vaguely, but the vigilante understood. He rolled off him and sank into the couch cushions next to him with a guttural groan. Fuck, Yukhei’s dick felt that one.

“What’s your name?”

The vigilante paused and cocked his head to the side, staring intensely at Yukhei. Yukhei instantly felt sick. Had he gone too far? What if he got killed for asking that? What if he—

“Mark. My name’s Mark,” he whispered.

“Dope! I’m—” Yukhei stopped abruptly. Kun, his liaison with the company, had guided him on how to introduce himself to new people from a classic insert yourself script. His name was Huang Xuxi, he was new to the neighborhood, and he’d just moved from Baltimore.

Yukhei had never been to bumfuck Baltimore. He might if he kept forgetting to actually use his new identity. “I’m Xuxi,” he finished lamely.

The side of Mark’s mouth slanted up, and Yukhei felt something give out from underneath him and spiral away. Probably his last remaining shred of sanity?

“I don’t even need to be able to hear your heartbeat to know that’s a lie. Try again,” he said.

“That’s my new identity. I’m Yukhei really, though.”

“Cute.” Why was he still smiling at him? _Oh, God, why was he still smiling at him?_

Yukhei’s stomach fluttered. “Do you want some Cheerios?” he offered the box out to him.

Mark wrinkled his nose, and Yukhei was offended on behalf of the box. “Nah, I’m good. I actually have to get to work soon,” he said, getting up to stand with a wince.

“You work? You have a day job?” Yukhei was surprised. He had never needed to think about it before, but it made sense.

“I mean, it’s not like I get money from beating people up every night,” he scoffed.

“You didn’t make any money last night, buddy,” Yukhei raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips.

“Hmm, spoken like a true fan.”

Yukhei held up two hands, “Man, I just met you. I’m just calling it like I see it.”

Mark had an eye smile that could bring a country to its knees. And a Yukhei, too. Any day he wished. “Speaking of work, you’re going to need a lawyer. Your witness protection doesn't protect you all that much. Even if the system wasn’t corrupt, you need to think ahead about how they may implicate you in court.”

Yukhei chewed at the inside of his cheek, processing. “Do you know any lawyers that won’t scam me?”

“I might know one or two,” Mark said wryly.


	3. Chapter 3

It had started out like any other Saturday. Yukhei had met up with his friends for lunch, and they’d tried to rope him into bar hopping with the rest of the gang. Wait, scratch that last bit. Bar hopping with the rest of the crew. Gang as a word had aged badly for Yukhei.

“Come on, it’ll be so much fun! You know Yibo’s flying in just for this weekend. You’re sure you can’t take off?” Renjun asked sweetly. Yukhei was amazed by how he could keep his heart so open like that, affection brimming on the surface for everyone to see in each word, action, and smile of his. If Yukhei kept that dove so open and present on his arm, it would simply flit away.

Yukhei shook his head miserably. “This one’s already my make-up shift because I was hungover on Wednesday and only got half my hours. I can’t be late for this one,” he said, and then showed up late regardless for work that day.

“Not even after your shift?” pleaded Yuqi. Damn it, she was pouting over her bowl of miso. Yukhei was bound to cave if he didn’t shut this down swiftly.

“You’re gonna pregame and be plastered by the time I even get there, and then it’s no fun at all,” Yukhei gently explained. “We gotta die like men. Together,” he vowed, making a fist.

“Men are stupid,” Renjun declared and staggered up to the counter to order another soju. And that was it. That was the last thing Yukhei had been able to say to either of them before he was wrenched out of his own life.

He really, really should have gone out for drinks instead.

.

.

.

.

.

Mark Lee never showed up for drinks, and Donghyuck was starting to get annoyed.

He kept flaking on their plans to go out. Mark had been doing that a lot lately. How could someone be busy every single time? No one was that busy, even if work got hectic. And especially not for the people that mattered. You were supposed to make time for the people that matter, full stop.

Besides, letting people down like that wasn’t even Mark’s style. For the entire few years Donghyuck had known him, Mark stuck to whatever he said he’d do. And if he didn’t, he’d beat himself up for it. Which begged the question: what the hell was he doing?

“Where are you?” he hissed into the phone. Jeno, their secretary, and only employee, was seated next to him at the bar, trying to not look uncomfortable as curious glances flickered at their table.

Donghyuck smiled disarmingly at him. He’d gone to voice record his text so Mark could hear his exact tone instead of reading out his aggressive texts with absolutely zero comedic timing.

Oh, please. Jeno had nothing to worry about. Just one of his bosses being murdered by the other. And being an accomplice to that plotting at Jeffrey’s, their favorite bar, in front of multiple witnesses who all had done business with Lee and Lee.

Donghyuck set his phone down and focused on Jeno; he was done being rude for the night. “So, how’s your week been, Jeno?” he tried and was instantly rewarded with one of Jeno’s beautiful eye smiles.

Jeno really, truly was so cute. They launched into actually talking, though it got increasingly, embarrassingly slurred as the night went on.

Donghyuck knew he should probably give in and ask Jeno out, but he didn’t want to make things any more awkward, especially since they worked together. If things didn’t work out, Donghyuck didn’t know if he could live with seeing an ex every day at work. Once of that hell was enough.

Donghyuck usually never held back. He had always been the bravest of their college friends. He asked the questions in class they were scared to ask. He confronted anyone who wronged him, and he excelled at his studies almost effortlessly. He breezed through people because they had never intimidated or scared him. The world was his for the taking, just as he willed it.

The only time he was ever shy was when he liked someone. Donghyuck wasn’t used to placing his heart in the palm of anyone else knowing they could crush it so easily. It all had blown up in his face so easily. And by then, Donghyuck decided he was done with that high-risk, high-reward game.

Mark was the last strong tether he had to a person, friendship or otherwise. They were each other’s anchor; only they could ground each other. They were two sides of a coin, only now it was fraying as they became more and more distant. He didn’t know who he’d be today without Mark Lee; they had tempered each other’s glass so much. Without each other present to balance the ideological scales, who would they even be?

“To Mark Lee,” Jeno suggested brightly on their fifth shot together, his eye smile a little fuzzy by this point but dazzling nonetheless.

“To Mark Lee,” echoed Donghyuck emptily.

.

.

.

.

It was Taeyong’s day off, and he was walking his family dog as a favor. This too was another form of penance and reconciliation. Dog parks weren’t very common in Hell’s Kitchen since the city lacked the space and air pollution to make truly inviting places. But DeWitt was open, and it happened to be a personal favorite of Taeyong’s, so he decided to take Ruby there.

As luck would have it, that morning he ran into Mark, sitting on a park bench, scrolling his phone. He had round red sunglasses on, but the brightness of his screen was glaringly at full capacity.

“Mark Lee?”

His head jerked up. “Father, what a surprise seeing you here. I’d almost begun to think you lived at the church.”

Taeyong laughed generously. “It’s not a convent; we all have shifts.” A beat. And then another. He hesitated to ask, but lowered his voice: “Are you really going to try and take down the entire ring, even the people that were just following orders?”

Mark chewed on his bottom lip, “I have to go as far high up the chain as possible. This is a hydra, and there’s no guarantee it won’t resurface in another city. Dismantling the network takes time, and casualties are unavoidable.” He sounded more confident than he was the last time they talked; he must have decided.

Taeyong’s heart seized a bit in terror. “You sure you don’t want to grab a coffee before work?” he asked.

His motives were two-fold. The first was sheer curiosity. Taeyong wanted to know how his past beyond just the way it had torn him down in the present. He wanted to know how Mark had gotten here. He wanted to talk it all through with Mark and ask the questions he couldn’t while in church.

Mark shook his head, kind even when disappointing. “I have a client meeting at 9 that I absolutely can’t be late for, sorry.”

“Later, then?” he tried. If he could just examine his mind a bit more, before Mark reached a point of no return that Taeyong knew from experience was damning.

Mark hesitated. “Father, I can’t. There’s nothing in it that either you or I would gain. Anything you have to say to me, I’d prefer you to say it to me now,” he said tersely.

Taeyong sighed softly to himself. There was tension everywhere in his life; no person had survived unscathed. “If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m here. And even if you don’t want me to be here, having someone might also help. I know there’s so much more happening in your head than I or anyone else knows, and I want you to know it’s okay to seek help to just think everything out loud.”

“Therapy…. You’re telling me to go to therapy?” Mark was incredulous.

Taeyong nodded—this was his second motive. “In the kindest way possible, yes. You’re struggling, Mark. You’re lonely in your one-man quest. You believe in the law, but it has failed you enough times that you’ve lost your faith in it. You’re lost faith in the people around you as well. You feel like a burden on the people you love, and you’re alienating them so they can’t fail you if they have to keep your secret identity for them.

“You want to protect them, yet you’re hurting both you and them in the process. Not to mention, you’re still grieving over your mother and brother, and you’ve never been able to talk through it. They’re people you loved, and they left you. Of course you would want to prevent going through that kind of pain ever again. But it’s not your place to decide how they should feel, as well-intentioned as you are.

“And you’re tired. You’re so, so exhausted carrying all this weight, and it’s not just our Catholic guilt. It goes so much beyond that. You’re living with the world’s gravity sojourning in you. You think a single misstep will let them all down even when these people won’t even know your name.”

“I’m not doing it for the recognition,” Mark cut in pointedly.

“I know, but still. You’re limping a race with this 50-pound weight on your back while the rest of the world runs on without that same weight. You’re running in a system that was always designed to fail you, and for that, I am truly sorry. You’re fighting a demon, and you’ve called it as such in confession.

“I don’t want you to have to suffer alone. You’re never alone. The days where you can’t move out of bed for hours? Where you have to consciously tell yourself, ‘Move, Mark.’ You have to know there’s something more going on, right?

“I know it’s not much, but I have a voucher for counseling. I don’t mean to overstep, but I know I would have appreciated someone reaching out to me when I needed it. I know how dark it can get, and I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for finding someone, finding something to really, truly ground me. I can email it to you if you’re interested?”

Taeyong’s eyes had drifted up somewhere above his head during that spiel, so he brought his gaze back down to actually see Mark. Mark leaned back, speechless and mouth agape at Taeyong. Taeyong felt uncomfortable under his scrutiny. As closely as he’d paid attention to what he saw in Mark, he still felt self-conscious seeing Mark do the same for him.

Mark fumbled for words, then stopped, then restarted again. And again, before settling with, “I’m fine just the way I am. I appreciate you caring, but I’m fine, truly.”

Taeyong breathed out heavily; he had expected as much. “Mark, you know I can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, but I also can’t condone what you do. I hope you can understand.”

Mark nodded. “Of course. Thank you again for your guidance and confidentiality,” he said.

Taeyong didn’t have the heart to tell him he simply stood nothing to gain from it. If he did, that would be a different story. But right here and now, he felt it was simply his duty. Just like Mark gained nothing from destroying his soul to save the lives of innocents.

Martyrs were never martyrs out of ambition.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Donghyuck was prepared to roast Mark to within an inch of his life, but they had a client first thing in the morning, so he had to postpone his dramatic monologue.

“Hyuck, this is Xuxi. I wanted both of us to hear his story before deciding if we want to pick up the case,” Mark explained, pulling out a chair next to him at their office table.

Mark had an annoying lilt to his voice. Donghyuck knew him well enough to know he thought something was funny. Something that Donghyuck probably wouldn’t think was that funny, given what he knew about Mark’s humor.

“Sure,” Donghyuck plastered on his retail smile and neatly slid into the chair so they could both sit and face the client. Xuxi was a really tall man with earnest eyes, big ears, and full lips. He was strikingly pretty. Where the hell had Mark found him? “What brings you in today?” he asked.

Xuxi was huge, but his hands quivered a bit. Donghyuck’s heart twisted. “Okay, so basically, someone’s trying to kill me. And I’m in witness protection right now, waiting to testify on what I saw, but this case is super fickle and I need a lawyer who knows criminal law, in case they try and turn it back on me.”

“Oh.” Donghyuck had _not_ expected that scenario. “Well, the thing is we usually take cases that are more, uh, urgent? Neither of us is experts in witness protection, but we can still provide some help in your case. Our services are certainly available for when and if these people try to charge you. But at this point, we can only offer consultation, since it’s so early on,” he recovered.

Xuxi nodded. “Yeah, so like, what are my rights? What should I be doing?”

Mark half-smiled, still sounding so goddamn smug. “You weren’t really a victim of the gang activities, but how involved you were with your workplace is what they’ll try to target. You were out of the loop, but they only need a margin to make it seem like you knew what was going on,” he said.

“But I never once did anything in the back room. I waited tables out front and then when I couldn’t pronounce the Korean feature dishes properly, I got demoted to just bussing. And then apparently my ass was distracting the customers or whatever, so then I got pushed into delivery. By that point, I was barely ever at the restaurant!” Yukhei exclaimed.

“Nice,” Donghyuck smirked. Yukhei was compelling and fresh in a way that many people (see: Mark Lee) often weren’t. Donghyuck then went further into detail about Xuxi’s next steps, the majority of which consisted of staying vigilant and keeping tabs on everything happening.

He didn’t even know why Mark had specifically looped him in on this. The only edge Donghyuck had was picking up an elective on this exact thing in law school, while Mark had split to fit in some patents course. Regardless, it all was straightforward. Whenever Xuxi would need to go into court (either to testify or defend himself), he would need evidence for support, especially since he’d stopped interacting with the people in his life.

They wrapped up shortly before 11:30, and the ending was clean until he asked Mark if they could talk in private afterwards.

He blinked, and his mouth opened a bit in surprise. “Oh, uhh, Xuxi and I are actually going out for lunch, so see you around 1, then?” Mark amended, apologetic with his shoulders. Goddamn him.

“Um, yeah, that’s totally fine! Have fun, but please don’t drink on company time!” Donghyuck returned airily.

Mark laughed brightly, and briefly, everything in the world was right again. Then the air settled back down again. It was summer, and they were long due for another explosive fight. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

.

.

.

.

Yukhei eyed Mark the minute they left the office and descended the stairs of their firm’s building. “I didn’t realize we were going out,” he said.

“Are we?” Mark mused, tilting his head a bit to think.

Yukhei’s ears went hot pink. Man, messing with him was almost too easy. “For lunch. Do you even need to eat?”

“I’m not a vampire, Yukhei. What the fuck,” he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“What human doesn’t like Cheerios? Make it make sense,” Yukhei was leering like he wasn’t already ridiculously tall and imposing, to begin with.

“Shut it before I bust your kneecaps,” Mark muttered carelessly. He gestured at the open revolving door for Yukhei to go first.

“Do not appreciate the short people propaganda, sir. And I have a trauma with those things, so no, I will be taking the other death trap,” Yukhei smashed the automatic door opener and stomped through that door instead onto the street.

Mark giggled and followed him out. “Alright, what do you want to eat? My treat,” he promised. “It’s the least I can do after you saved my life.”

Yukhei stopped in his tracks. “At the risk of offending you to the point of killing me, wanna go somewhere semi-fancy?”

“Oh my god, like a date?” Mark’s voice pitched up a few octaves.

Yukhei spluttered, and Mark couldn’t help but laugh again.

.

.

.

.

They settled on Thai food, but the place they selected was vegan, overpriced, and subsequently near empty for lunch. There were some people, but it was the perfect ambience for talking freely without being overheard.

Yukhei was fiddling with his singular fork, like the mermaid chick with the red hair. He couldn’t remember her name; God, what was it? She was the one with the crabby friend, like the friend who was a crab but was also crabby—

“Ariel,” Mark realized, the word finally coming to him.

Yukhei cocked his head cutely. “Uh, what?”

“I, never mind,” he finished with a flourish of his hand. “So what’d you think of Donghyuck?”

“You asked me to eat lunch so we could gossip?” Yukhei scrunched his brows together, then shrugged carelessly. “Yeah, sure. He seems nice and witty, too. We should all get drinks together sometime.”

Mark blinked. He’d never met anyone quite like Yukhei ever before. “I don’t know how to say it, but I’m forever indebted to you. Thank you for saving my life, but I need to ask you one more thing, and that’s to, like, not tell people you know who I am. It would hurt you too if it came out that you knew. I’m sure you understand,” Mark said.

Yukhei nodded. “Assassination attempts? Been there, done that. I don’t want to give them any more chances to get it right,” he muttered cynically into his red curry.

Mark furrowed his brows. That last bit was concerning, but he filed it away for later. “Yeah, so that’s kind of the main reason I asked you out for lunch. Just don’t go around, like, um, telling people you know who the vigilante is?”

“Is this like your first time doing this? I’m a pro. I know how to keep my mouth shut,” Yukhei oozed bravado.

“Right, and how long did it take for you to tell me your real name?”

Yukhei deflated a bit. “I was under duress!” he grumbled.

Mark grinned at him, elbows on the table while his hands framed his face. Something in him just could never stop smiling whenever he was near Yukhei.

Yukhei sobered up a bit, blinking himself back to reality. “But in all seriousness, what were you doing there that night? I only know what I saw at the restaurant, but that’s obviously not the full story. Why were you getting beaten up by Johnny?”

Ouch. That part was blunt but technically correct. Mark leaned back into his chair, elbows off now. “I had been following his family. There had been some talk of someone outsourcing their services to even the other gangs. He makes people disappear, regardless of who hired him—the yakuza, the mob, and even undercover cops. But that was his problem; I caught wind of him because of how widely he marketed. And then I trailed him to Johnny’s restaurant. I thought I was being smart, but they were ready for me. I’d marketed too widely as well.”

“I’m sorry,” said Yukhei.

Mark kept forgetting this man had seen him at one of his lowest, rawest moments. That kind of vulnerability was difficult to let someone else see, much less a stranger. Mark hadn’t even let Donghyuck see that far into him, and they were best friends. Confiding didn’t come to him naturally, and even in situations where he didn’t have to hide anymore, Mark couldn’t fully wrap his head around it.

“It’s okay. It’s on me for not paying more attention to what was going on,” Mark said, mouth downturned slightly. “I only caught snippets through walls anyway, but the real issue was my broken Cantonese. I only have pieces of what’s going on, and I didn’t catch the part where they laid a trap that was so fucking obvious.

“They’ve been talking about a big shipment through Pier 78. I don’t know when, but it’s had them all rattled for months now. They’ve changed their whole operating system around whatever is coming in through the port. It has to be something new they haven’t done before because the organization is so sloppy. They’re rushing for something, and I haven’t fucking figured it out yet. And until I do, lots of people are going to die,” Mark took a deep, unstable breath.

Yukhei blinked. “I speak Canto,” he said. “If you want, I could help translate real-time for you.”

“Oh, um,” Mark said intelligently. He hadn’t thought this far ahead yet. “It’s dangerous, though. I don’t know if you’d be able to, uh, keep up.”

“My stamina is perfectly fine. I can keep up perfectly with vampires. How hard can it be?” he dismissed, palms open and up to the sky, just like the dumb blonde girl emoji. There was no acceptable reason for Mark to know that emoji so well. (Hyuck used that one way too often at Mark's expense.)

Mark put his face in his hands; he badly needed Yukhei’s help. As risky as it was to bring him along, he couldn’t pass up this perfect opportunity. “Just don’t, like, freak if someone gets stabbed,” he sighed.

Yukhei squeaked.


	4. Chapter 4

Jeno stood up from his desk the moment Mark walked into their reception area. He handed Mark a yellow file folder at arm’s length. “We have another walk-in,” he said, voice a bit hushed.

“Oh?” This was new. “What do we know so far?” Mark began to thumb through the file.

“They’re in the office with Hyuck, but the client isn’t the one paying. They have a sponsor,” Jeno’s voice dipped even further. “It’s shady; be careful.”

Mark skimmed the file with their preliminary contact info, but he didn’t recognize any of the names or addresses. He had never heard of a Yangyang Liu or Hendery Wong before. “Thanks, Jeno,” he said sincerely.

Jeno’s vibes had always been strong. He always had an unexplained feeling for which clients were guilty and which were innocent, even before Mark had a chance to hear their heartbeats and pick out the liars. Mark had his sharp senses, but he wasn’t infallible. Somewhere his sensory processing disorder skirted around, Jeno was picking these things up. Mark knew to trust his intuition before his own.

Jeno nodded with a flat smile and went back to his salad. To the untrained eye, his movements were all professional, but because Mark knew him well, he could sense that undercurrent of tension. Something was off. 

Mark stepped into their office and closed the door behind him with a soft click. Both the new people turned to him, noting the intrusion regardless.

“No worries. I’ll catch my partner up to speed at the end. Please continue,” Donghyuck pacified neatly.

Mark settled into his chair, the creak of it familiar but not welcome right here and now. This all was the exact scenario as this morning with Yukhei, only Donghyuck’s and his roles were reversed. There was a man in a sharp suit and another man in a black hoodie and cargo pants next to him.

“You gotta believe me; I didn’t do this,” the man at the right in the hoodie said, eyes on Donghyuck. There was a hum in Mark’s ears that was just slightly off like a string that wasn’t quite in tune. _The man was lying._

“So Mr. Liu, you were at the bakery when you ran into…” —Donghyuck and Mark both snuck another glance down at his file— “—Mr. Moon, with his three bodyguards?”

“Yeah, I didn’t know who he was, but I figured he must have been famous or something if he had that many bodyguards,” Yangyang said. The man at the left in the fancy suit, Hendery, Mark had deduced from context, nodded in time with Yangyang’s words.

It was suspicious; the words were canned and well-practiced. “But they attacked me and I lashed out in self-defense. I didn’t mean to cause them that much harm; I had never even met them before then,” Yangyang said.

“And you didn’t provoke them or anything?” Donghyuck prompted.

“Oh, not at all. They were the ones harassing me for wanting to talk about bread during our wait time. He wasn’t on the phone or anything, and the owner was helping someone else out, so we both had ample time to wait. “

“You said they harassed you? Verbally or physically?”

“Hmm, which sounds better?”

Donghyuck made a strangled noise at that, and then Mark stepped in. “You seem to know the law well,” he said diplomatically, carefully, measuredly.

“Oh, you know. I struggled in my youth,” Yangyang explained with a shrug.

“And adulthood as well, apparently,” quipped Donghyuck. The air in the room tanked another few degrees. Damn his smart mouth.

Hendery spoke for the first time since Mark had entered. “Perhaps you need some time to decide if Neo Holdings is the best fit. I assure you, you will be compensated most fairly for your work with us. In fact, just your discretion thus far is much appreciated by my employer.”

He pulled at an envelope from an inside pocket of his jacket and slid it across the table. Mark tried to keep his face neutral as Donghyuck peered in. He was gawking at the numbers on that check.

At that, Yangyang grinned but with weight, with intent. It felt wicked, and Mark shivered. “Thanks. We’ll review the case a bit more and reach out to you to inform you of our decision. Thank you for considering us,” Mark said curtly.

Hendery’s eyes remained polite but cold as they all rose to their feet. “Gentlemen, thank you for your time,” Hendery said, neatly buttoning his pinstriped suit jacket. They all shook hands on it.

Neither of their hands was clammy. Hendery and Yangyang were entirely unfazed by all the hostility and stress of whatever had just happened. They had sought out Lee and Lee but evidently didn’t need their business. Even if Mark and Donghyuck chose to turn them down, they wouldn't be affected.

Mark couldn’t unclench his ass until they were out of their office door. What the fuck. _What the fuck was that._

“So?” Donghyuck prolonged the syllable, expectation on the tip of his tongue.

Mark widened his eyes comically. “No way. Absolutely no way.” The bow of his shoulder line had been strung again, now directed at someone else.

“I think we should take it. Mark, we need the money,” Donghyuck shrugged callously.

A spark of irritation laced Mark’s veins at that. “Hyuck, he’s guilty. You gotta know that. They’re asking us to defend someone who we know is guilty. And yeah, it does matter where the money comes from because it’ll come back to haunt you. They only want us because we’re small.”

“And what about it? We have to use that to our advantage. This is a murder suspect out on bail, and it’s not even his own money. Just think about how much they have backing him,” Donghyuck insisted.

“No, that’s exactly the point. It’s too risky, and it’s not fair,” Mark was struggling to articulate to Donghyuck exactly why. He knew Yangyang was lying, but he couldn’t tell Donghyuck how he knew. He was stuck.

And then, to just to add insult to injury: Mark could hear Hendery dial on his phone through their office door, firm door, and elevator door and say, “It’s been taken care of, sir.” How many layers would Mark have to comb through to find out who was on the other end? What was Neo Holdings fronting for? And how had they heard of Mark and Donghyuck’s firm?

“Okay, so what’s your fucking problem?” Donghyuck barked out. Nah, it apparently got better: this was the fucking cherry on top.

“What do you mean?” Mark tried to tread carefully.

“You’ve been avoiding me for weeks now, so I’m asking you why. You always skip drinks, even when we plan them ahead of time. You never respond to my texts, even the actually funny ones. I’m constantly covering for you being late in court. And you’re not at your apartment, either. Because one time I was plastered and came over to check. Is this all about the time I told Jeno your head looks like a stop sign?”

“I, what? No. Hyuck, I’m not mad at you.”

“Okay, then what the fuck is it?” Donghyuck ground out.

“I- I can’t tell you.”

“Then who the fuck _are_ you telling? Mark, we’re best friends. If you have a problem, you have to be straight up with me about it. At least respect me enough to say it to my face, and not disappoint me like that. I’m literally giving you the chance to air your grievances, and you’re still evading me.”

“Uhh, I thought you’d appreciate the alone time with Jeno,” Mark attempted. This technically was not untrue.

“That is…a terrible excuse. Try again, Mark Lee.”

Mark could feel himself start to crumble and tapped into his own desperation. “I can’t tell you, Hyuck. Please, it’s for your safety. I know it’s not good enough, and you deserve more—”

“Hell yeah, I deserve better than that,” Donghyuck snapped. “I’ve been there for you since the beginning. You and me versus the world? What happened to that?”

“That hasn’t changed. I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you by associating myself with you.”

“We run a law firm together, dipshit. People are gonna associate us together no matter what. I’m not gonna force you to reveal anything you don’t want to, but just… know that I’m here, and if there’s anyone you could trust, it should be me.”

Mark nodded around the lump in his throat. _Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry._ He kept up the litany to distract his mind from overthinking.

“And if you can’t go out, then just fucking say that. Don’t just try to avoid me.” Donghyuck took a deep breath and squared up. “I understand exactly why you don’t want to take this case; I really do. But taking the case also helps us learn more info on them?”

Mark halted, trying to keep up with the many sounds he had to wade through at the same time. “That’s…not right.”

Donghyuck scrunched his nose at him and shook his head condescendingly. “Did you even consider that? God, how little do you think of me? Listen, they have to give us more details about the case anyway. And we can get a better grasp of who they are from that. From the lies they tell.”

“I….” Mark was speechless; he had outwitted him again. “Okay, you know what? Let’s do it. Let’s take this case,” he said.

Donghyuck raised his brows at him. “Really?”

“No, like, really. Let’s do it. I wanna see how this turns out,” Mark resolved.

Donghyuck twisted his mouth like McKayla Maroney, eyes still scathing. “Alright,” he rolled his eyes. He cast a nervous look over at Jeno, who was still focused on his salad with a hand gripping the fork tightly enough to tell he’d heard the shouting match. Damn it, Mark was never going to hear the end of this.

He’d almost forgotten how petty Donghyuck could be.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What the fuck was Yukhei supposed to wear for his not-a-date-but-a-murder-spree date?

Okay, okay. That was a bit dramatic, he had to admit. It wasn’t like Mark was a serial killer. Yes, he murdered people sometimes, and yes, he didn’t like cereal, and yes, Yukhei did not like any cereal hater’s vibes, but yes, Mark existed. Exceptions for Mark.

Yukhei reached into his dresser drawers and pulled out a huge unfolded pile of clothes to rifle through and dumped them on his bed. Black was easy to narrow down, and then Yukhei needed a balance between hot and functional.

From there, it was easy. He picked out some black joggers and a muscle fit thin black turtleneck undershirt. The last thing he wanted was for his good jeans to rip in the windy New York air. 

He picked out a well-worn leather jacket with six outside zipper pockets to wear on top of the turtleneck. He rummaged around in the one right above his heart, and pulled out… an unused condom packet. Yikes, that had to be super old. He tossed it on top of his dresser and then added small silver hoops to match the zippers.

Yukhei eyed himself in his way-too-short standing mirror by the bedroom door. It wasn’t like he couldn’t be self-aware at times: he was hot. See, it wasn’t only a Mark thing.

He grabbed his motorcycle gloves and keys and went off to pick up his not-a-date date.

.

.

.

.

.

Mark could hear Yukhei from a mile away. He almost didn’t even need heightened senses to know it was his loud ass motorcycle. Yukhei rolled to a stop at the curb in front of him, his clothes pure shadow in the dead of night. He took off his helmet with both his gloved hands, the motion jostling his hair ever so slightly. Jesus, he was beautiful.

“Need a ride?” he beamed at him smugly.

Mark’s brain short-circuited. “You look… good.”

“Thanks, I know. Where to?”

“The pier. I wanna search some containers.” It was at this moment Mark registered he was wearing a silver ear piercing. _Dear Lord, he was wearing an ear piercing._

“Oh, is _that_ why you have a crowbar?”

“Uh, yeah. What else do people use crowbars for other than opening crates or doors?”

“I don’t know, fashion? Supreme dropped a crowbar a while back,” Yukhei pointed out.

“Oh my god, I forgot about that. I only remembered the brick as the stupidest thing they made.”

“Bruh, don’t even get me started on the brick. So I had my friend Renjun help me queue up our computers for me so I could buy it—”

Mark snorted. “You actually bought it?”

“Yeah. The damn brick sold out in three seconds, but I got one. And then I was like, what am I gonna do with a random brick? So then I bought a Supreme box for my Supreme brick. Only when it came in, the Supreme brick was too small for the Supreme box. So I had a brick I bought for $60 and absolutely no Supreme box to put it in. It was tragic!”

Mark’s eyes bugged out, “The horror.”

“Exactly,” Yukhei shook his head tragically, forging on. “Anyway, it all worked out in the end. The resale value appreciated, so I made a profit when I sold and then bought Golf Wang Vans with that money.”

“Hey, that’s not half-bad. King of recycling.”

“I know, right? Anyway, do you want to actually wear the helmet this time, Robin Hood?” he held it out to him, inner forearm exposed in the stretch.

Mark nodded and tried to not simp at the corded muscle and veins. “I have to. If I don’t, then I’ll get overwhelmed by the sound of the motorcycle and the wind and everything else,” he explained. Anything in life was a double-edged sword, and his powers were no exception. He could hear far more than the average human, but the onslaught of it all could weaken him more than the average human as well.

“How did you survive that first night?”

Mark swallowed. “I was unconscious, and all I could feel was pain.” His mood deflated a bit after recalling how weak he had been. He slipped the helmet on and settled onto the seat behind Yukhei.

Yukhei hummed from a place deep in his throat. “Sexy.”

“Take it back, right the fuck now!” Mark screeched. 

Yukhei guffawed heartily, but Mark felt more than heard the vibration through his ribcage. He flipped the ignition on, and the bike lurched forward. He wrapped his arms around Yukhei’s stomach and held himself close, feeling impossibly small against the greater machinations of the universe.

And then, despite all the sensory overload, amidst it all, Mark could hear his own heart fluttering too.


	5. Chapter 5

Stakeouts were just as boring as television claimed them to be. There was nothing to do besides surf on his phone and talk to Mark who had a penchant for frying Yukhei’s brain beyond coherent speech because of his hotness. Also, Yukhei was stupid hungry. He usually snacked at this ridiculously late time while playing video games.

“So why here?” Yukhei wondered. He was half-convinced he’d asked this before but couldn't remember the answer for the life of him. They were walking the corridors between shipping containers. Gravel crunched underneath Yukhei’s boots, a gritty sound on an uneven surface he had no control over.

Mark either had the patience of a saint or the same goldfish memory as Yukhei: “Uhh, the Triad members come here almost every weekend like clockwork. They said they were expecting a big shipment, but nothing has been out of the ordinary in terms of delivery size. That’s what has me thinking it hasn’t started yet?”

Yukhei nodded, “That makes sense, I guess.”

The shipping containers littered the entire port, some of them stacked to the sky as if they weighed nothing. Mark led him to the corner of a muted blue one, knocking at it for show. Mark turned around to face Yukhei. There was a fire in him Yukhei could feel even through the mask: “Let’s go up.”

Yukhei balked, “The fuck does that mean? Can you give me a lift?” He leaned in close to Yukhei, arms snaking around his side. “What are you doi—”

Mark’s mouth twisted into a grin, Yukhei struggled to tear his eyes away from the details of his stubble. He jumped up, pulling Yukhei with him as they flew up enough feet to land on top of the shipping container.

“Holy shit,” Yukhei breathed. “That wasn’t what I meant, but okay.”

Mark laughed joyously and led the two of them over and around another few miles of containers. “Parkour,” muttered Yukhei under his breath impulsively.

Mark stopped moving but didn’t answer. He was listening, Yukhei realized. The whoosh of the wind tickled at Yukhei’s ears.

“What are you hearing?” he asked him.

“Aside from your stomach grumbling? They’re sitting inside a container, opening boxes of….guns, I think? Come on, let’s get you closer,” Mark mumbled and reached for Yukhei’s wrist to guide him the remaining distance.

He felt his face cheeks warm and was suddenly thankful it was night. “How can you tell?” he blurted.

“The click. There isn’t anything else like it in the world,” Mark said. Yukhei shuddered at that; he was too familiar with it. “I didn’t realize there would be this few people tonight. How do I always get lucky when you’re near?”

“Hot people privilege,” Yukhei shrugged.

The wind whistled again and he set to work, filtering past it. Only two men were speaking, but more people were clustered inside the container. Yukhei could hear them better than he could see them: he’d forgotten his glasses for vanity. They’d pried open a ground-level container with another (non-Supreme) crowbar probably and were inspecting the insides. From the angle Mark and he crouched at, they could see the few stories down and into the container. Their voices were a bit echoey and garbled because of the acoustics, but Yukhei knew his language well enough to still make sense of it.

“Okay, so the one dude is selling the guns, and the other dude’s buying them,” he whispered to Mark, who was at his right.

“Trust me, this baby is top of the line. It won’t click, I promise you. It’s state of the art. It’s light as hell in your hand. And it’s leagues ahead of that stupid ass Beretta the Feds be carrying,” the seller said, city drawl creeping into his tone.

Yukhei relayed this back to Mark, who only snorted cutely.

“And you’re sure this is enough to get the job done? You know these lawyers ain’t in-house, and boss don’t play around. He wants them dead in one shot,” the other man said, weighing one of the handguns from the crates in his hand.

Yukhei translated this bit too, and Mark’s eyes widened comically. He tossed him a look he couldn’t quite pierce through in the night. He shushed him since his face was being loud and craned forward to hear again.

“Has the big shipment come in yet?” asked the seller.

“It has, but there’s only enough jackpot to last the month. The Dragons have to find another plug for the next month,” the man buying the guns said.

Idly he thumbed the gun in his hand, inserting bullets into it. “I guarantee you that gun won’t click or else my name isn’t Nakamoto Yuta,” he boasted.

“Jackpot. That’s what they’re shipping, but I don’t know what that is,” Yukhei said, frustrated a little. He translated into English the rest of what he’d heard.

Mark inhaled sharply, “It’s fentanyl. I just didn’t recognize the word in that context, but shit, that’s what it is. Jesus, they’re smuggling fentanyl.”

“Cool. Uhhhh, what is fentanyl?” he asked.

“How do you not know what—you know what, never mind. It’s an opioid. It’s 50 times stronger than heroin. The raw form’s been shipping in from China to Mexico, and then laced with heroin. It’s killed so many people who didn’t even know they were taking it. It’s so fucking dangerous.”

Yukhei’s voice trembled, “So they’re dealing in pretty much the strongest drugs known to mankind.”

Mark heard it and reached to place a hand on Yukhei’s chest, right above where his heart was. “Breathe,” he whispered calmly. “It’s okay. I gotchu,” his other hand gripped Yukhei’s shoulder, a warm but grounding weight.

Yukhei focused on each motion of the breath, each in and out as its unit. Mark let go once he stabilized but his hands hovered just an extra second longer over him, hesitant to touch but also hesitant to leave.

“I’m good,” Yukhei told him. Mark could hear the lie, but he let him go tenderly.

“The Triad here in Hell’s Kitchen had picked up heroin trafficking after the Italians lost the trade in the 80s. That, and then the opioid epidemic only fueled the demand over the past decades. It’s the lacing with heroin that’s relatively new for them,” Mark explained.

Yukhei swallowed, “Doesn’t that mean they’re killing their own customers?”

“Yeah, because they can afford to. It’s ridiculously profitable,” Mark said disgustedly.

“I’m gonna be sick,” Yukhei announced and heaved to his left over the side of the container they were sitting on. The vomit splatter must have been loud because the Triad chatter stopped and morphed into, “Did you hear that?”

Mark swore: he didn’t need a translation to understand that. Yukhei wiped his mouth savagely and scrambled to his feet.

“Cmon,” Mark tugged at his arm. Yukhei saw the buyer man pull up the gun he’d just seen him load and shoot.

But it failed to fire, clicking as sure as Nakamoto Yuta. Yukhei laughed breathlessly at that, dizzy and also terrified for his life. Quick as lightning, the man threw that gun to the ground and pulled out another to shoot up at Mark and Yukhei. A bullet ricocheted at the container to their right, and they ducked their heads, crawling back until of the Triad’s sight.

Yukhei felt an immediate pang of guilt poke at his heart; he'd ruined things. Mark lunged forward to throw a knife down and turned around before Yukhei could register the piercing cry that followed. Mark pulled him into sprinting back the way they came through the shipyard. They rushed since they’d given away their location, but none of the Triads caught up with them, luckily.

Yukhei was breathing heavily after some miles and free jumps down where Mark could catch him. His stomach was still filled with butterflies despite having puked everything out mere minutes ago.

Mark gave him a bemused smile. Yukhei tried to not fixate on his attractive mouth and settled for the cute devil horns on his mask. In retrospect, this was not much better.

“Alright, that’s enough for today. You can’t function anymore. See, your eyelids are already drooping, which your brain’s already half shot to hell,” Mark said.

“Nah, I’m good,” Yukhei tried to say. Through clipped teeth to hide his vomit breath. And a yawn too.

“Yukhei,” Mark was gentle, “it’s time to rest.”

“Okay,” he acquiesced, shoulders drooping in defeat. They had returned to where his Ducati was parked, and Yukhei was already starting to feel the ache of coming down from a high. “Could you, um, stay to keep the apartment safe?” he asked.

Mark squinted at him. “The apartment?”

Yukhei swallowed audibly and nodded. “In case they trail me there. In case they come back to finish me for realsies this time. You yourself said the witness protection detail didn’t do much at all,” he recalled.

“Uhhh, it’s 4 a.m. already, and I’m tired too so” —a perfectly timed yawn— “yeah sure, why not,” Mark shrugged.

“Great,” Yukhei beamed at him, happiness shining through a skylight of his heart, bright despite his exhaustion. “I would offer you the couch, but….” Yukhei trailed off, remembering Mark's blood which had irrevocably destroyed the couch cushions. It was honestly comparable with the amount of jizz that had also ruined that couch.

“Do you have a sleeping bag?” he laughed.

“Um, no. Why would I go camping if I’m in a witness protection program?”

Mark gave him a tired eye-smile. “And your bed is cleaner than your couch?”

“Uhhhh,” he had to think.

“Yukhei, what the fuck.”

“It’s mostly clean, I promise,” said Yukhei, holding up two palms in surrender. 

Mark sighed, “I’m too tired to argue. Come on, let’s go home,” he shoved Yukhei back lightly towards his motorcycle, but Yukhei staggered farther back, his mind swirling.

Home? He hadn’t seen his actual studio or even his parents’ house in months. The place the agency provided wasn’t bad at all, but it was by no means his new home. It was a temporary place because Yukhei knew he wasn’t staying and there was nothing worth making it home. Even if he attempted to personalize the place, it wouldn’t change how he felt inside. It was a liminal space, a space of transition that had no identity of its own. He was staying there, but he wasn’t living there.

He hadn’t seen his friends in months. Even the few people who had made his old place feel like a home for Yukhei were gone, and now there was no one to make it something worth remembering. He no longer had a place to call home. Kun and Chenle were only brief gulps of air breaking the surface before drowning again. They too were checkpoints stuck in their own liminal spaces. Mark had been his one remaining solid connection to the evolving, alive present.

Mark had been the one to help him feel less alone in the world that he had left. As much as he had saved Mark, Mark had also taken care of him and given him a purpose again. Even if they had just met, Mark had given him more in that short time than anyone else had in months of knowing them.

Yukhei didn’t have a home anymore, but in Mark’s voice just then, he felt the vestiges of one.

.

.

.

.

Yukhei realized he forgot his keys right when he needed them. He rummaged around his back pockets, but they were empty.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Mark sounded exasperated. 

“I swear I had them when I left, but—”

“Here, let me. I can do it,” said Mark, lightly pushing him out of the way. He ducked down so the lock was at eye level, and produced a tiny bobby pin from his pocket to stick in. He froze for a second, listening, and then turned it deftly to the right, unlocking the door.

Yukhei stopped whining to gape in awe. “How did you do that?” Yukhei asked, swinging the door open onto a rectangle of darkness. He let Mark in before reaching for the soft, yellow light switches at his right. Perfect for night and whenever Yukhei couldn’t be asked to open his eyes any more than he needed to. For some reason, this also included midday.

“I can hear the clicks inside. It’s no big deal,” Mark admitted shyly.

“You’re amazing.” Yukhei’s voice was stable, but he felt shaky voicing what he felt. He hadn’t had anyone else over other than Mark, and their dynamic hadn’t been like this the last time. He almost preferred the unconscious guy over the one that could hear his heart so openly limping its way to love.

“Oh, did you clean up the place while I was gone?” joked Mark, prodding a pile of laundry—clean, most likely—with his foot.

Yukhei deadbolted the door and then turned around again. Mark raised his chin from the floor.

“Do you want shoes by the door or on the rack?” Mark asked, taking off his mask to hang it on the jacket pole. Cute. He was so cute.

“I don’t really care, so wherever, I guess,” Yukhei said, kicking off his boots and flinging them toward the general corner by the door and rack. Ehh, he’d get it later.

Mark scratched his neck and then carded a hand through his matted, sweaty hair. “So…” he drawled, surveying his Yukhei’s living room.

He blinked and tried to not so obviously sniff. “Uh, yeah, so do you wanna take a shower? I can lend you some clean clothes for the night.”

Mark smiled that lazy half-smile at him. “Thanks, really.”

Yukhei waved a hand, “Don’t worry about it,” and led him into the bedroom. “You can pick stuff from any of the drawers, just not the bottom one.”

Mark squatted to read the label on the bottom drawer. “You organize your underwear by color? That is so cursed.”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it,” he said. “I’m gonna put some tea on while I wait. Do you want some?”

“Ahh, yes, please.”

“Aight,” Yukhei said. He handed Mark a towel and then headed back into his tiny ass kitchen. He eyed the toaster oven, his mortal enemy. It could not be relied on to help him right now. He had to fend for himself in this time of crisis. It was time for his kettle and three remaining brain cells to shine.

.

.

.

.

.

“Have you _ever_ used fitted sheets?” Mark peered at him incredulously over his cup of honey ginseng. The heat of the drink was fogging up his round spectacles.

“Hey, I know what they are. I just need to wash them,” Yukhei explained, pointing at a very telling beach ball-sized clump of fabric next to his closet.

“This is why you have cum stains on your couch,” Mark shook his head dramatically.

Fuck, so he had noticed. “Shut the fuck up,” he said, plopping down face-first into his air mattress to hide his flaming face.

He rolled over onto his back to see Mark. His head was perfectly blocking the ceiling fan light from this angle, and Yukhei’s breath hitched. He looked so soft and angelic like this, swallowed in Yukhei’s hoodie and with his little tuft of hair peeking out at the top already drying curly in a way that motherfucking hurt his heart and his dick equally. How was that even possible?

Mark had to stretch up to reach the fan light string. Yukhei choked on his own predictability, quickly inhaling at the sight of a mere slit of his hip.

“Lights out,” he said sweetly. God, Yukhei groaned internally and screwed his eyes shut. He was so stupid. He wasn’t going to survive this night. This was a terrible idea.

He felt the air mattress dip at his left under Mark’s weight. “Hey, Yukhei?” Much quieter this time.

Yukhei hummed softly and opened an eye. Mark was sitting upright, finishing the last of his tea. Shades of blue clung to him under the limited moonlight; he looked unbelievably ethereal. “Yeah?”

“Thanks.” His hands tightened infinitesimally around the mug.

“No problem.”

“Still.” A clang where he set it down and then: “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight. Fair warning though: don’t steal the duvet, or I’ll crush you in my sleep,” Yukhei mumbled.

“That actually sounds fantastic right about now,” Mark sighed dreamily.

“You’re sending hella mixed signals, bro,” whined Yukhei.

A small giggle from his right. Great. Yukhei rolled to his other side to reach for his phone charging on his side table. This was a brilliant time to find an image that could turn him off enough to calm down. Or, you know, set an alarm for tomorrow.

“Oh my god, you’re one of those phone-at-night bitches? I can’t believe you!” Mark hissed.

“Shhh, go to sleep, Mark. You’re so loud; you know what I mean?” he whispered.

Mark laughed extra sharp and loud then, and it should have broken the magic of whatever haze Yukhei was in, but it didn’t. His heart hammered in his chest, but no one mentioned it. He set his phone back down on the table with a tiny clatter, feeling the ring echo not in his ears but his brain long afterward.

And in spite of it all, Yukhei slept, peaceful in a way he hadn’t felt in years.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi made a small change to chapter 2, so i just got rid of mark stealing the cartridge; shouldn't change the flow of the story thus far but yeah, if i reference back to it, then that's a thing that happened :D

Yukhei shuffled and then sniffed. He couldn’t move his left arm, and it was dissolving into pins and needles. He cracked an eye open. Oh fuck, Mark was still here, and his head was pillowed on Yukhei’s arm. And another arm was over Yukhei’s waist, so he was stuck.

Yukhei chewed the smooth inside of his cheek. He absolutely could not handle being this close to Mark, not when he smelled ever so faintly like his shampoo from last night. Those damn strawberries. He inhaled deeply and tried to lift Mark’s arm with his one free hand slowly. This was not going to work. 

“What the hell are you doing?” mumbled Mark, squinting his eyes at Yukhei.

Yukhei recoiled instantly. “How did you—”

“Your heartbeat’s racing. What’s going on?” he asked, eyes blinking into bigger circles by the second.

“I’m having a gay panic; leave me alone!” he squawked.

“Oh, dear God, your breath,” Mark retched softly, leaning away from him and over the side of the bed.

Yukhei scowled. “I will…….be right back,” he pointed a finger at him and shuffled over to brush his teeth in his bathroom.

His eyes were a little swollen, and his hair was floppy over his forehead without hair gel. He really needed a trim to get it above his brows again. He could definitely pull off either hairstyle, but Yukhei did like it up more. Hair gel was very grade-school, but a properly styled quiff could be sexy as hell.

Yukhei spat paste in the sink and noted how his lips were a little extra pink from the mint. It was Mark’s lucky day. Yukhei smoldered one last time at the mirror just to make sure—yeah, he was still hot—and headed back into the bedroom.

Mark was sitting up, scrolling through his phone. He looked incredibly small swathed in the duvet; Yukhei’s heart stuttered. Mark’s head snapped up. “Sorry about that, lol. I’m used to hugging a pillow when I sleep,” he admitted sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head.

Yukhei garbled for words. “That is so fucking cute,” he said.

Mark flushed bright red, and Yukhei felt his addled mind scatter into even further particles. “Do you, um, have anything to eat?” he asked, fiddling with the sleeves of his hoodie.

“I can put some honey ginseng on again. I have some ghost pepper chips too if you want that.”

Mark furrowed his brows but was still amused and smiling. “Ghost pepper chips and tea for breakfast?” he repeated.

“Mate, it’s 3 p.m. in the afternoon. It’s snack time if anything.”

Mark laughed graciously and left to freshen up. Yukhei headed into his kitchen to set the kettle on. He found his glasses in a kitchen cabinet and slipped them on. As the water boiled, Yukhei continued to broil internally. He was feeling somehow worse than when he had to patch Mark up from the dead that night. Even Wikihow didn’t have an answer for how to deal with a crush that could also literally crush you.

Mark padded over to his kitchen table in the shorts he’d borrowed from Yukhei. The shorts were so big on him they ran past his knees. Yukhei resisted the urge to scream.

“What do you do normally on Saturdays? Do you still roam the city during the days you don’t have work?” he wondered.

He blinked slowly. “Nah, just the nights. Otherwise, I can’t avoid being seen. I don’t actually have anything to do today, so a free day, I guess?”

“Brilliant, do you want to go barhopping?”

“What? Why?”

“I haven’t gone out in months, because of security. But if you’re there, it’s something I can do and still feel safe.”

“Uhh, sure, I guess?” he said, bewildered. Mark scratched his elbow idly.

Yukhei grinned, only the tiniest bit feral.

.

.

.

There’s definitely something very fucked up about Yukhei’s sleep and food schedule. But thankfully, Mark’s on the same system, so they made it work. They ended up having their first solid meal of the day at the Shake Shack as the sun set, and Yukhei made sure to pay this time.

Yuhei had wanted to recreate whatever experience he’d missed out on that Saturday night he’d chosen to work. But three bars in, he was starting to realize something was missing. The high he sought wasn’t here. It wasn’t about the physical act of going out for night drinking; it had never been about that. Rather, what he realized was the people he was chasing weren’t here. And there was nothing to replace that. He wasn’t here with Renjun or Yuqi, and nothing would change that.

Yukhei was suddenly feeling a little sick, and it wasn’t from the alcohol. He suddenly tired of trying to make everything about himself. “Take me to someplace you wanna go?” he asked Mark.

Mark nodded on a delay like a slow-moving film reel, and they clung to each other as they staggered to the next bar, a quaint place Yukhei had never been.

.

.

.

.

.

Mark was lucky Yukhei had asked him to keep an eye out for him because it gave him an excuse to drink less. Mark was a ridiculous lightweight, and if he drank to get drunk, Yukhei would need to start taking care of him. With that said, he’d definitely had some alcohol already, because he ended up deciding to drag them both to Jeffrey’s. Common sense? Tossed out the windows and buried deep in the Hudson River.

They only just sat down on the high chairs when Yukhei poked his arm and nodded his head at a spot behind Mark. He whirled to see his coworkers. The same coworkers he’d been avoiding drinks with. Fuck. They made eye contact and slid down the remaining seats of the dark wood bar. Jeno was smiling generously like the world had just slotted into place, but Donghyuck’s eyes were sharper and smarter.

“Donghyuck and Jeno, what a surprise seeing you here,” Mark said, ridiculously stiff because he needed air desperately. Jesus Christ, this was a disaster waiting to happen.

“Mark, this is literally our favorite bar. This is not a surprise at all,” Donghyuck chortled at his expense.

Fuck, Mark was definitely drunk by this point. But no amount of alcohol could melt the frost emanating from Donghyuck.

“Yukhei, you have to be amazing to have been able to convince this one” —Donghyuck placed both his hands on Mark’s shoulders and squeezed too tightly— “to actually go out. We’ve been trying for who knows how long now!”

Mark winced, but Yukhei didn’t seem to notice. He guffawed, while Jeno just gazed on with wide, curious eyes. “It’s okay, man. You just gotta make it happen,” he said, shrugging loosely. Damn it, he was gone too.

Mark cursed internally and grabbed at the tequila shot just laid down in front of him. This shit wasn’t fair; he tilted his head back.

.

.

.

.

Alcohol helped with talking about everything and nothing, but it also required ten times as many bathroom breaks. As nervous as Mark was to leave Yukhei alone with Donghyuck, he needed to pee. And so did Jeno, so they both went together.

Donghyuck was their token loud friend, so it was notably quieter when it was just them. He kept the conversations going so Mark and Jeno could just listen and chime in whenever they felt comfortable. But without him, they had to step up more. Mark felt awkward which then compounded when he realized that was what he was feeling. There was no reason for them to be awkward when they knew each other so well; he couldn’t stand it. “So, Jeno, wassup?” he drawled.

Jeno wrinkled his nose at him and reached over him for soap to wash his hands. “Mark, you’re so lame sometimes.”

Mark cringed as he wrung excess water from his hands. “We all have our flaws,” he tried.

“Is that why you don’t go drinking with Donghyuck? Because you’re a lightweight?” blurted Jeno.

Mark’s glare shocked him into silence. “I am _not_ a lightweight, and we all have gone drinking together plenty of times, Jeno. For the love of God, I do not understand why—”

Jeno gasped sharply and sank to the floor of the grimy bathroom on his knees. His eyes flashed dangerously like he was going to pass out and then focused at a point beyond Mark’s head. He hissed and dug his nails into his palms.

His vision hadn’t stopped spinning, but Mark went from feeling buzzed in a warm way to hearing the liquid in his stomach slosh like a boat in choppy waters. “Jeno? Are you okay?”

Jeno trembled like a leaf in a storm and then slumped forward. Mark caught him by the shoulders and pulled him back up into a standing position. His forehead was beaded in sweat, and his golden eyes had come back to reality to latch intensely onto Mark. “Don’t beat him up,” he whispered.

“What?” Mark let go of his grip on Jeno’s forearms; he was lost.

One of the stalls banged open with a hiss and a clearly drunken stranger waddled out. He took one look at the two of them standing so close to each other and spat out, “Fucking gays.” He didn’t even bother washing his hands at the sinks by them and staggered off towards the dingy bathroom’s exit.

Mark’s blood boiled, but he reigned in his fists just barely. The door swung on his way out. Mark took a shaky breath and whirled to face Jeno again, the question on his face.

Jeno grimaced, and Mark’s neurons crackled timely. “You’re powered, too. Holy shit, Jeno,” he breathed.

Jeno’s eyes darted to the door and then up. “I’ve been trying to hide it. It started when I was a teenager, but I get flashes of the future. Only one of many paths a few minutes or seconds before it happens,” Jeno whispered. There was no one else in the bathroom, but Mark understood the fear; he had been there himself.

“That’s how you knew about the Liu case? This is how you knew they were guilty?”

Jeno nodded. “I’d vibed it. I saw your meeting with them that morning. How did you know?” he asked.

Mark was certainly drunk by this point because he tried to show Jeno the inside of his clothes as an answer to his question.

“Not like I needed you to prove definitely that you’re a boxers kind of dude, but uhh, thanks?”

Wait, what? Mark struggled for a breath of cool air in the midst of his haze. Oh, god. He was gonna throw up. He hadn’t worn his suit underneath today, so that attempted line of logic had skipped enough steps to be incomprehensible. Fireball: 1. Mark Lee: 0.

“No, I—” He fumbled go convey around his racing mind. “I could hear the guy’s heartbeat. He was point-blank lying. I’m so glad you agree he’s guilty, too. Maybe we can finally convince Donghyuck to let it go and—”

Jeno shook his head vehemently. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell you without ruining the time current, but you gotta stick with this one, I promise you.”

“Jeno. I already know you can see the future. Just tell me.” Precognition was a rare but unbelievably useful gift if Mark could spin it to his advantage.

“No, Mark, I’m dead serious here. If you don’t take the case, then Yukhei will also be negatively impacted,” he said gravely.

Mark blinked. He didn’t quite understand that concept of causality fully yet, but he knew he wasn’t going to abandon Yukhei. No matter what. And if this was the L he had to take for that, then so be it. But still, just to fish: “How are they related?”

Jeno frowned, and Mark smirked at his attempt to tiptoe.

“The Triad, right?” he filled in the blanks. “There’s a connection there?”

Jeno bit his lip and nodded. “Come on, we better get back before someone thinks we’ve meditated.” And that was that. Mark didn’t get another chance to ask questions, not without blowing his and Jeno’s covers.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Yukhei didn’t really remember leaving, but he must have if he was now here at Mark’s place. By some miracle, they made it intact. Jeffrey’s was close enough to be walking distance to his apartment.

Whenever Mark disappeared, Donghyuck had complained to Yukhei about their strained relationship. Yukhei didn’t understand everything, of course, but he’d gathered enough from both their perspectives to feel entitled to an opinion. They were deteriorating from a lack of trust, and they fought nastily. Yukhei felt an immediate pity for Jeno, who had to put up with this on a daily basis. They needed to clear all the misunderstandings when they were sober and level-headed.

Given how Mark and him were both evidently plastered, Yukhei was semi-proud of his ability to still be somewhat coherent. He dragged a mini trash can to the side of the bed and also had the foresight to take off his pants before jumping into bed. Mark tumbled in after with him. Yukhei smiled loopily and gave in to that feeling of his axis upending.

He reached for Mark’s shoulder but somehow ended up with a hand at his neck and gripped that instead. “Thank you for everything,” he murmured. On instinct, his thumb rubbed at his Adam’s apple.

Mark stared at him with doe eyes and then collapsed forward into him for a sloppy, open kiss as if gravity were horizontal and began and ended with his lips. His lips were sweet, his mouth warm and hot, and Yukhei wanted to drown in the stickiness of it. The wine he had earlier had gone straight to his dick apparently. Everything felt muddied.

With some horror, he pushed Mark away. They were too drunk to do this. Neither of them was in their right mind, and they couldn’t consent properly. He couldn’t savor anything this drunk out of his mind.

Yukhei’s eyes fluttered open, half-afraid of Mark’s reaction, but he’d fallen asleep somewhere in that last minute, already snoring softly. He breathed and rolled away from him, relieved though still terrified.

His head was swimming from the kiss. What the hell was he supposed to do now? How was he supposed to function? Literally how was he gonna look him in the eye tomorrow? He spiraled, but his mind had latched onto a thought, thin like glass noodles, floating above the rest in a layer about to evaporate. “The brother,” he whispered. How had Mark known Johnny had a brother when he didn’t even know his name?

And then he passed out with his nose buried in Mark’s armpit.

.

.

.

.

Yukhei woke up to a splitting headache.

He was fairly sure they hadn’t slept like this, but they had subconsciously moved to sixty-nining but not, like, in the fun way. Yukhei had to wake up to a face full of Mark’s feet. Ugh, Yukhei jerked backward and then rolled onto the floor with a huge thump.

He whimpered and then Mark’s floating face was peering down at him from the bed. “How are you even alive right now?” he muttered drowsily.

Yukhei grunted and stood up to reach for his phone underneath his pillow to check the time. It was still too early to be recovering from a night out. “9 a.m. is too early to be alive, I agree.”

Mark tilted his head out from under the slate gray covers. “Did you just say it was 9?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, shit. I gotta get to Mass. Yukhei, I’m super sorry, but I can’t stay for breakfast.” Mark launched out of bed, hopping around to shrug his old jeans back on.

Something in Yukhei crackled. “No worries! Thanks again for last night,” he said.

Mark’s hands stopped moving for a second, in the middle of buttoning up, which made for an amazing sight. “Yeah, um, no problem. Listen, if you want to eat anything, it’s there in the fridge and you can like just leave the spare key under the mat or something. Sound good?”

Yukhei tried to focus through the haze. He felt a little bit nauseous; there was something he was forgetting, but of course, he couldn’t remember what. He nodded at Mark as if he understood; he did not.

Ah, well. It would come back to him.

.

.

.

.

Donghyuck had a bitter taste in his mouth, but it wasn’t from last night’s round of drinking or his morning coffee. He rarely had hangovers, and he had the best tolerance in their office. No, all queasiness he felt now was from who he was planning to see this morning.

He hadn’t been at Pearson-Specter since his internship. Structurally, everything in the building was the same. Only the faces and layouts had changed the space. When he’d interned here with Mark, the walls had been painted beige. Now they were a muted green Donghyuck liked better. The paralegals hadn’t been on the 27th floor then, but clearly, they'd since moved.

The partner offices were still in the same corner of the floor, though, which mattered the most. Donghyuck approached the reception area and was surprised to see a familiar face at the desk.

“Jisung,” he smiled at him and extended a hand to shake. They had interned here together but hadn’t quite gotten close enough to keep in touch outside of work. But they had gotten along; that had to be enough.

Jisung stood up but threw out scissors instead. “Donghyuck! It’s so nice to see you. How are you doing?”

Donghyuck glared playfully; he hated losing. “I’m doing good. What are you doing here?” he asked.

He was almost six feet tall and gangly like an adolescent that had never settled into his new size. But despite that air and his young age, when it came to actual skill, Jisung was efficient and sharp as hell no matter what he got his hands on. “I’m on contract. Trying a few different things out for different people, but we’ll see it how it goes," he explained. "I’m not a big fan of the hours,” he confessed in a small voice.

Donghyuck nodded sympathetically. For starters, there was the fact that he was working on a goddamn Sunday.

“Can you get me a glass of water?” he asked. Jisung sighed pointedly and rolled his eyes.

Donghyuck grinned unapologetically; he knew it was Jisung’s pet peeve. “Sorry, force of habit.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can, uhh, head on in. He finished his 10 o’clock early.”

Donghyuck nodded and stepped around the desk to head into the row of glass offices. He stopped just before the end to school his features, take a deep breath, and step on in.

“Jaemin,” he called.

Na Jaemin. The city’s best corporate lawyer. If anyone could help Donghyuck figure out what to do with Yangyang’s case, it was him. Also Donghyuck’s ex-boyfriend, the one that had cheated on him and broke his heart during school. He was still unhinged clearly; Jaemin was the only one insane enough to make his staff work Sundays.

Donghyuck didn’t feel very secure meeting his ex but put on a confident mask. “What’s up?”

Jaemin looked up from the papers on his desk, wire glasses perched on his nose. He was wearing a deep burgundy waistcoat over a light dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up a few inches and cufflinks scattered across the desk. His jaw dropped a bit, “Hyuck. What are you doing here?”

Donghyuck sank into the chair across from him and reveled in his surprise. “Just wanted to catch up and tell you about this case I’m working on.”

Jaemin eyed him warily. “Isn’t that breaking the cardinal rule of attorney-client privilege?”

He looked the way Donghyuck felt—baffled at his current reality. “Normally, yeah. But this client hasn’t signed anything with us, which means I can bitch about how weird the case is. Just let me think out loud, okay. And I'm sure you're curious enough to propel me toward the end, so give it a shot.” _Give me a shot._

Donghyuck summarized as quickly as he could, including everything from the sponsors to the bodyguards to the way they’d all been killed. “The client is claiming self-defense, but it’s suspicious. Even without the benefactors, the case reeks. Their bodies have been bashed in with some metal, but it’s not a rod or anything known. The murder weapon was never found, but the only witness, the cashier that called 9-1-1, saw him punching the men.”

Jaemin let out a hmph that ruffled his hair. Donghyuck couldn’t tear his eyes away; this was bad. Oh, this was very bad. “What if he’s powered?” Jaemin suggested. “There are always new ones popping up, but you know the big ones.”

Donghyuck froze; it wasn't like talking about supers was taboo, but it was always somewhat controversial. While it wasn't as damning for conversation as say, religion or politics, it was difficult to gauge how others' opinions on them fell, either for or against. “You think he’s the Iron Fist?” 

Jaemin cocked his head to the side. “He was a mercenary before; who’s to say he’s not doing the same now? That would explain the lack of injury to his hands, despite punching the living hell out of the bodyguards. But Hyuck, this is all basic criminal law. Why on Earth did you bring it to me?”

He shivered at how easy the nickname had slipped out for him; he wished there was a way to take it back like a declined card. “Tell me what you know about Neo Holdings,” he demanded.

Jaemin stiffened carefully. “A Google Search can probably tell you more,” he quipped with a light laugh. Normal, but just reedy enough for Donghyuck to know he was off-kilter.

Donghyuck cracked his knuckles. “Already did my research on public knowledge. Now tell me what _you_ know about them, inside and out,” he demanded.

Jaemin cast a cursory glance at his door, which was still open. He stood up to close it with a sigh. “Donghyuck, what the hell have you gotten yourself into if they’re coming after you?”

“I don’t know; officially, I know they’re a consolidated set of Wall Street entities. The main one is shipping freight, right?”

“You take them on, it’s not just one person. It’s an army of disposable people that will keep coming after you. We have had to go up against them in class actions before, and it was never pretty. The legitimate side of their business is solid and impossible to trap. We always send our closers to settle out of court.”

“Legitimate?” echoed Donghyuck.

“It’s a family-owned company, but that’s the funniest bit. Because family is bastardized into a different meaning, like a sense of brotherhood in fraternities. The idea was what immigrated first. The illegitimate side is all the organized crime. Racketeering schemes and illegal shipments the legitimate side fronts for. You weren’t hired by a Wall Street conglomerate; you were hired by the fucking mafia,” Jaemin told him.

Donghyuck took this in stride. “So then, do we even have a choice in turning down the client?”

“Not if you want to live,” Jaemin said morosely. “And even if you do, they might return to extort you some more.”

He raised his brows, “Hmm, so then did they extort you?”

“Not me, but a friend,” he corrected him sternly.

Donghyuck cackled. He’d almost forgotten how shamelessly Jaemin lied, how easily that came to him. _Nah, I didn’t sleep with them. I only have eyes for you. I’m not going to take the job. I’m not going to leave._ This was the double-edged sword liars dealt with. If you lied too many times to the same person, they’d pick up on your tells. Unpredictability was what made lies believable; it was never the conviction with which they were said.

Let exes stay exes, except for when you could use them to gain something for yourself.

Under Donghyuck’s silence, Jaemin pivoted. “How are things with Mark?”

God. Where to even begin? He wrinkled his nose and made an unpleasant face. “I don’t know; they’re not really that great. Our work and everything is fine, but he’s hiding some personal stuff from me, and that’s been straining our friendship,” he admitted truthfully.

“I mean, it’s personal for a reason. Maybe he just wants some alone time. Or time with new people. You know, some non-Donghyucks.”

“Please, he’d rather have five of me than one five-year-old me. And you know better than me the man sucks at networking,” Donghyuck dismissed. “We move better as a unit.”

“You never know,” Jaemin said. “Maybe he’s branching out behind your back, making a new firm."

Donghyuck glowered. “Not everyone’s like you, Jaem.”

Jaemin laughed haughtily. “Fair enough. You know I love a good mutiny. But not everyone has powered clientele and the mafia knocking at their door,” he said.

He went mum, but the gears in his brain began to shift. _Powered…._ Sometimes all that was needed was a little push for the rock to roll down the hill, for the puzzle pieces to snap into place. For Hyuck, it was right there and then. He had come to Jaemin for an outsider perspective on the case, but he’d given him that perspective on Mark as well.

This entire time, Donghyuck had been thinking about himself. Which was fair, because he was the center of his own universe. What if he’s powered? Jaemin had asked. Not just Yangyang, but Mark too. What if. He thought Mark said avoiding him wasn’t personal just to satiate his feelings, but if he truly had been telling the truth, then what?

Mark missed their nightly outings. He was never at his apartment, and he was constantly distracted. The masked man was supposedly short in stature, and he also knew hapkido and jiu-jitsu, same as Mark. They both had dark hair, and they both were updated on the news incredibly quickly. Mark constantly showed up bruised to work from sparring at the local ring. Mark who was overly sensitive to certain sounds. Mark who couldn't quite lie well to Donghyuck. Mark who just cared too much.

No one ever could say Hyuck wasn’t smart. He was a goddamn lawyer with street smarts to boot; and for him, knowing anything was always simply a matter of time. 

Either Mark was trapped in a Fight Club remake or he was the vigilante. _Motherfucker._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pearson-specter is from suits & the firm from the good wife is on floor 27 so that's where those came from !!
> 
> will probably finally take the actual lawyers to court in the next chapter lmao
> 
> thanks as always for reading <3


	7. Chapter 7

As far as the trial strategy went, Mark hadn’t prepared at all. He hadn’t had time to review Yangyang's case at all, amidst juggling some casual nightly vigilantism and his other pending cases—the ones he didn’t share with Donghyuck. He was fucked. And Mark didn’t have nearly the flair for improvising that Donghyuck did, so he was pretty much guaranteed to flop. Well, flop by lawyer standards which were as high as their grades and LSAT scores.

Mark pushed open the heavy dark-wood door to enter the courtroom. The room was a bit smaller than most; there were pews split down the middle like in church but only a few rows. Most of them were filled with other sets of lawyers either awaiting their turns or taking notes. The district attorney was too fancy to grace this case, but her lackeys apparently were not. Mark recognized some of the assistant district attorneys as they huddled to discuss strategy. 

Donghyuck and Yangyang were already seated upfront; they were waiting for him. Mark hurried to join them, only stopping once they saw each other. 

Donghyuck had worn Mark’s favorite grey pinstriped suit. They had a running joke that it made him look older than Mark for once since he was going grey, but really, truly, Mark just loved how confident Donghyuck was in it. Go, best friend! That was his best friend!

Yangyang had followed their advice and dressed up nicely too. He was wearing a freshly ironed all-black suit, and he looked polished and clean, mostly. He’d dyed his hair purple since they last talked. He appeared just as casual and at-ease since they’d last spoke, giving Mark a lazy, obvious once-over. 

Mark’s brain dissolved into key smashes and immediately, he averted his eyes. With a pounding heart, he approached their table and sat in the first chair. Mark smiled sanguinely at the jurors and the other lawyers he made eye contact with. 

Then, to his right under his breath, he hissed out: “I didn’t write the closing. I haven’t run through it at all, and I have no idea what’s going on at all. Can you cover for me?”

“I—What? Mark Lee,” Donghyuck gave a full-body sigh, “you had one job!”

Mark had the decency to look ashamed, and Donghyuck’s eyes softened. He almost never missed deadlines; if anything, Donghyuck was the one who believed in their mutability. “Here, I’ll take care of it. Just watch the jurors,” he said. “Let me know what you see.”

Mark resisted the urge to cry: watching them was almost harder. 

.

.

.

The cashier was the sole witness willing to testify to the entire exchange, and she fidgeted while on the stand. Mark tried to pinpoint what exactly had her that nervous, whether it was just general anxiety or a specific fear. She wasn’t comfortable in that chair—no one ever was—but that discomfort was especially so, in her case.

“Did you see the defendant kill Mr. Moon and the two bodyguards?”

“No. I crouched down the moment I heard a gunshot and just barely saw over the counter what was going on.”

“Ah, yes, let’s talk about the guns at play. They were entered into evidence as 3-B and 3-C. The bodyguards were the only ones carrying. How many shots did you hear?”

“Two,” Joy said definitively.

“Two shots, but three dead bodies. How is this possible?” the prosecutor wondered out loud.

Next to him, Donghyuck snickered. Rhetorical questions were so tacky, Mark agreed.

“Each of the PPK guns had a loaded cartridge with seven bullets each. In total, three bullets were missing, all of which were found in the bodies. Though a 1 in 10000 occurrence, sometimes two bullets are fired at once, due to a manufacturing defect. 

“In the transcript of Ms. Park’s 9-1-1 call, we can clearly hear the two shots. Although security cameras only recorded the storefront and not what all transpired inside, we know no one else entered or exited the establishment within the time frame these three men were killed. There are only so many players in the vicinity.”

The argument was supported somewhat by evidence, Mark conceded. But it still left too much open to question. It didn’t feel right leaving so much up to luck, to mere chance. 1 in 10000 was so unreliable, and the jury seemed to agree. 

Donghyuck scowled but got up to walk around and add dimension to the cross. “Both guns entered into evidence were tested for fingerprints. According to the lab report, 5-A, only the bodyguards’ fingerprints were found on it. My client’s fingerprints were not. Ms. Park, was the defendant wearing gloves the day you saw him?”

She shook her head, and then corrected herself, jerking forward to verbalize, “No.”

Donghyuck smiled just a little at the corner of his mouth, but Mark knew him well enough to see the world in it. Together, they'd make it work.

.

.

.

.

Yangyang fared considerably less well than Joy on the stand: he was too casual to inspire empathy from the jury. It was lazy; it was infuriatingly calculated.

“Were you wearing gloves that day?”

“Nope.”

“Do you remember what you ordered that day?”

“Bread.”

“What kind of bread?”

“Edible.”

The judge sighed audibly, and Yangyang grinned remorselessly. “I mean, medicinal. It’s comfort food.”

This kind of hostility might have been fine if the prosecutors were the one conducting the cross, but no, he was screwing up their own argument. Mark couldn’t perfectly decipher Donghyuck’s carefully blank face, but he could tell he was getting irritated. 

Mark made a note to bill the corporation extra for the hassle. Stupid fuckers. Their client was being a little shit, intentionally sabotaging his own defense. Why in the world would he do that? What the hell could he have to gain?

.

.

.

.

.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to examine the facts of the case. It’s the prosecution’s job to prove without a doubt my client committed the crime, but the evidence does not definitively point to Mr. Liu doing this,” he boomed.

Mark hesitated, but he wasn’t as smooth as Donghyuck. That had always been the difference between them in school. For Donghyuck, things came naturally. Gorgeous execution, through and through. 

But Mark's style was to toil away, racking up billable hours and out of court settlements. Anything Mark had accomplished was from sheer hard work. And maybe it wasn’t as polished, but it was his effort. And that alone was precious and genuine enough. It simply had to be.

“You cannot condemn a man if you are not certain he did this. I hope you’re able to remember this when deliberating,” he finished, having learned enough on the fly to actually do the closing statement as planned.

He had to do his job, regardless of his moral proclivities. Innocent until proven guilty. Even if he didn’t believe in his client, this was the law he believed in. 

But for his argument? They’d chosen the flimsiest one. Donghyuck would agree it was well-deserved.

.

.

.

.

.

When the jury reconvened, Mark’s nerves had calmed a bit. Just watch the jury, Donghyuck had said. The devil lay in the details. 

Juror Two who had put her phone on vibrate instead of silent. Juror Five who kept itching at his elbow. Juror Twelve whose knee cracked as they stood up.

“Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict?” the judge prompted.

“We have, Your Honor,” Juror Twelve said, then paused. 

Mark heard their beating heart and knew immediately something was off. Too fast; this was all hurtling too fast, and there was no way to slow it down. A tragedy almost meteoric in eliciting horror.

He tensed. “We, the jury, find the defendant, Yangyang Liu, not guilty.”

Donghyuck sank back into his chair with a sigh, and Yangyang broke out into an insufferably smug grin when Mark glanced over at him. What the hell had gone wrong?

“So say you all?” The judge asked, and the other members of the jury confirmed the decision.

.

.

. 

Donghyuck had disappeared almost immediately to rob a vending machine, leaving Mark alone with Yangyang in the hallway as the crowd dispersed around them. The world moved onto the next case, but Mark lingered. Yangyang’s eyes seemed lighter; he didn’t appear very surprised by the verdict. “You seem relieved, Mr. Liu,” he commented carefully. 

Yangyang peered at him intensely, searching, almost scanning. “Oh, you know,” he dismissed. “As much as I appreciate not having to go to jail, it’s also nice to know the proper strings have been pulled. Things are back to their normal balance.”

“The juror,” Mark had a sinking feeling. 

“It’s easy when you know people’s focal points. The things that matter to them don’t matter to you, which is why it’s perfect leverage. Taeil’s weakness for croissants. The foreman’s illegitimate children. The cashier’s girlfriend.” A sly pause and then he added, “Donghyuck.”

“You didn’t need to,” Mark said and tried to hide his teeth gritting.

Yangyang smirked. “And I didn’t. Neo Holdings did, and none of what I said will go anywhere because of attorney-client privilege.”

Mark mock-gasped. “You say that like I won’t still beat your ass.”

Yangyang doubled over, laughing. “Oh, Mr. Lee, you are the funny one. I had it wrong all this time,” he said, as he began to walk away.

“So, how’d you do it?” Mark called after him, much too loud for the now deserted hallway but enough to make Yangyang halt and cast a velvety look over his shoulder. His shadow stretched for miles, far too dark for midday.

The trash can at his right rumbled to motion. Mark, startled, jumped back. It moved up that distance to where Yangyang was, where his left hand curled into a tense, grabby shape, exposing the tendons. 

He was telekinetic. Of course, the murder weapon never had his fingerprints on it. He could peel the bullets away and fire them without any gun at all. 

Mark was stunned into silence. He’d completely neglected the notion of powers. None of his clients had ever been powered before. Certainly, never any of the liars. 

And as far as the legal system went, he was innocent. Mark was horrified. 

.

.

.

.

“I really thought we had that one, Hyuck,” Mark sighed and buckled into the passenger seat of Donghyuck’s Camry. He couldn’t help but feel that twinge of disappointment at the verdict. 

Donghyuck gave a single, dry huff of a laugh. “Usually, we say that when we don’t win, but now we’re saying it when we did win. It just happens, I guess,” he said as they peeled out of the parking lot. 

“Yeah,” he turned in his seat to face him, “but that’s a known criminal, out on the streets. Not just any criminal, but one with powers. _Powers_ , Hyuck.” Mark updated him on Yangyang’s magnet for trash bins. Sorry, telekinesis.

Donghyuck went carefully still, and his fingers tightened on the steering wheel. A bolt of fear struck Mark’s heart. “You’re not surprised. Wait. Did you know about this? What the fuck. How?” He got increasingly screechy. 

Donghyuck cringed. “Okay, don’t be mad, but I went to see Jaemin to consult, and he gave me the idea. I didn’t know which powers or abilities Yangyang had, but I had an inkling.”

Mark blinked twice in rapid succession. “And you didn’t think it was a good idea to tell me this?”

“Nah, it was just half a hunch, really. And I just got anxious because of the corporation, so I reached out to him.”

“Were you...safe and everything?”

“Oh, yeah. It was funny, in a kind of weird way. But yeah, perspectives. Jaemin gave me a lot of interesting new perspectives,” he said with a specific kind of wavelength Mark wasn’t quite on. 

“Yeah, I bet he did,” Mark grumbled. “I’m not bitter,” he said bitterly in a bitter tone. 

“Aww, don’t worry. You’re still my work husband. No one could ever replace you,” Donghyuck said, syrupy sweet.

“Fuck off, I’m telling Jeno.”

Donghyuck screamed his head off, but Mark chuckled. Worth it. 

.

.

.

.

.

.

Where the law ended, the vigilante began. And he was unapologetic in his rage. Daredevil met Yangyang in his apartment that same night, and any freedom he bought was then stolen away again. 

.

.

.

.

.

.

They’d sent Neo Holdings the bill with a tacked-on bonus for the win, and the response was almost immediate. It was scarily fast. 

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Hendery had rasped over the phone in a final confirmation call the very next day. Mark was half-tempted to bill him for that phone call too but reigned in the urge just barely. They were sewing up loose ends, the same as the last time he’d talked to Yangyang. 

Bloody and a little messy, but ultimately clean. Just like Mark’s shiv before, during, and after becoming acquainted with their criminal client. 

Since then, things had settled down considerably. Donghyuck and he had split their workload, and they weren’t working on any cases together. A brief or two, here and there. Maybe attending a deposition or negotiating settlements, but they hadn’t been to court in a while. The routine was fresh.

Yukhei had also gotten into the habit of swinging by the firm on days he was just bored. He was tall enough to lounge across four of the chairs in their waiting room. He was absolutely ridiculous. Mark loved it.

Yukhei always made Jeno laugh, and he kept up a running joke with Donghyuck of not knowing each other’s names. Watching them be witty together ignited something warm in Mark. He hadn’t been able to properly appreciate it when drunk out of his mind, but it felt familiar. Watching them all together just felt good. 

.

.

.

Sometimes they would grab a work lunch together, but tonight they’d opted to go to Mark’s place after work and order in some Chipotle. Donghyuck had left first, then Jeno, and then Yukhei supposed he would have to leave. Eventually. At some point. 

[Maybe after the next Harry Potter movie they watched on Mark’s couch. Maybe when Mark tired of Yukhei actively comparing him to that insufferable character.]

“Mark, I thought of something. How did you know Johnny had a brother?”

Mark’s hand paused on the remote. “That’s how the Triad works. It’s familial. There’s the main family, which is only the first-born sons, and then there’s the branch family, which is everyone else. They almost completely separate their lives and professions, regardless of if they’re siblings.

“The main family all head businesses to front for their illicit activities. It’s familial and bleeds nepotism. That’s why you see children heading skyscrapers they couldn’t have possibly built themselves. The branch family gets some of the profits but are largely free to pursue whatever they wish. They don’t have any say in the business decisions of the actually immigrated mafia. The first-born cousins call each other brothers more than the actual brothers.”

“Bruh,” Yukhei said. “That’s so sad.”

“Tell me about it; I’m a younger brother,” Mark said.

Yukhei cooed, and Mark blushed. “Ahhh no, I’m sure your older siblings love spending time with you.”

“No, I, um, my brother’s actually dead,” Mark said quietly.

Yukhei stopped smiling, eyes bugging out. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry; I had no idea.”

Mark smiled but it had dimmed this time, like a dial had been muted. “I got my powers in the crash. I don’t know why exactly, but I could hear better, heal better after. I think I might give it all up though if it meant being able to see him again.”

He glanced up at the ceiling, and Yukhei toed at the cream-colored carpet. Personally, he’d much rather take his chances with Satan, but he understood Mark theoretically. But there was so much to unpack—how so wrong Mark was. It wasn’t something he could even properly articulate on the spot. Love and affection weren’t mutually exclusive with the ability to be special. 

“You shouldn’t have to make that choice, even in hypothetical scenarios,” Yukhei mumbled, worried about overstepping. He didn't know how to navigate someone else’s trauma. 

Mark laughed sadly, and Yukhei’s heart twisted. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand to see Mark so in pain. He attempted to pivot to something else lighter, drawing from the oldest corner of his five-minute memory. 

“So Taeyong is actually a businessman, then,” Yukhei whistled. “Johnny had said he was a priest. That’s dark.”

Mark stilled. “What did you just say? How do you know Taeyong?”

“Johnny’s brother, right? He’d call him sometimes at work. Taeyong?”

“No, oh my god, no. I meant Kun. I thought you understood I’d been following Qian Kun. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. You had no idea.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Yukhei’s stomach lurched. 

“That’s why I told you to get a lawyer. Your witness protection doesn’t actually protect you; it makes you disappear for the people you’re hiding from. And then they kill you after a year or so when no one from your old life’s looking for you anymore. It’s a protection racket, crafted by the Triad you're running from. It’s all fake,” he said.

“What the fuck. Wait. What the fuck. So then Taeyong’s an actual priest? How do _you_ know him?”

Mark grimaced. “I see him every Sunday for Mass, and he knows who I am because of confession.”

“Are you…going to be okay?” 

Mark wrung his hands, “I don’t know.” 

“Holy shit. Why did you let me just continue living there if you _knew_ that?”

“Because you really were safest there. I followed Kun for months before he led me to Johnny. There’s no way their flags wouldn’t go up if I told you.”

“Mark, that’s not okay. What the fuck. It’s not up to you to determine who deserves to know what. It’s the same as your thing with Donghyuck. This puts me in direct danger, and you didn’t think it was important to mention to me? If it’s my life, I wanna be the one making the decisions,” Yukhei spat out. “Literally who the fuck are you to think you can take care of other people?”

Yukhei regretted it instantly. Mark had just told him about his family dying in a car crash. All his anger melted into dread. He opened his mouth to say something, to fix something, but Mark’s face had shuttered, completely locked with the keys thrown away. Yukhei couldn’t make sense of what he was feeling even if he tried. 

“Mark, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to come out that way, you have to understand—”

“It’s fine,” Mark said, face twisted into a scowl. “I think you should leave now,” he said tightly, terribly clipped. 

Yukhei’s eyes burned, but he was right. He didn’t want to make things worse. Yukhei gathered up his things and all but jumped for the door, only hesitating to look back when one foot was already over the threshold. There was a lump in his throat; he couldn’t say goodbye without the waterworks. 

Mark stood mere feet away from him, but his eyes were stuck on the floor, the wall, anywhere except Yukhei. He felt like screaming. He said nothing, just turned back wordlessly, and stepped out. 

Behind him, the door just clicked closed softly. Mark, gentle as ever, didn’t slam it. Somehow, out of everything, that was what broke him. 

Yukhei sprinted down the flights, beyond desperate and frantic for fresh air. It didn’t help at all. He kept hyperventilating, unable to breathe. Something in his soul had chipped, with only the night breeze present to witness that horror.

He’d never felt more alone.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sry abt the delay, got distracted while writing a diff fic lmao, 
> 
> i thought abt drawing out the angst but then was like NAH bc both mark and yukhei are kinda impulsive lol

Mark was seething. And some part of him was dying. Taeyong was the second brother, and there was no way he hadn’t known who each player in the game was. He was the branch family, and all he needed a whisper in Johnny’s ear to ruin everything for Mark. And this wasn’t even considering what all Yukhei had to say about his failure being responsible for people. He couldn’t protect his own family, much less all of Hell’s Kitchen from the underworld. 

Because the underworld wasn’t a place: it hid between pockets of normal life. It clung to street corners, isolated alleys, and screaming skyscrapers. It was your friend or friend’s friend. You couldn’t fight a war when you couldn’t even recognize your own enemy. 

Mark couldn’t sleep just like that; he left to go to the church. 

.

.

.

.

“Father, would you like to get a coffee?” he ground out.

“Mark Lee! Sure. I’m sure there’s some empty classroom somewhere around here we can chat in privately.”

Taeyong’s robes billowed around him as he scurried around trying to find a place to talk. Mark followed close at his heels, but he was too busy overthinking about the many different ways this could play out. Timecurrents, as Jeno called it. He’d come here impulsively, but which path was the correct one?

Taeyong ushered him into a room with single desks, surprisingly high ceilings, and stained glass windows of the Virgin Mary. Mark avoided eye contact with the lamb from the nativity scene.

“Want a Whiteclaw? I’ll have one if you have one,” Taeyong said, and then popped his open before Mark could respond. Drinking problem? Nah, they didn’t have time to get into it.

Mark’s knuckles turned white gripping the edge of the desk. He didn’t sit down; instead, he towered over the head of the table across from Taeyong.“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Oh,” Taeyong sank down deep into the chair. “Johnny. You’ve run into him. I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” his voice dropped an octave.

“Run into him? That severely underrepresents all the crimes he’s committed. Your brother is in the fucking mafia,” Mark said bluntly.

“And he’s still the favorite,” he muttered under his breath. 

“So it’s true, then? He really is your brother and I didn’t know this entire time?”

Taeyong squared his shoulders, though he was painfully thin. “He is. You don’t just leave your blood brother out to die,” he said.

“He’s not dying,” Mark scoffed, exasperated. “He deals in murder. That’s his business. Murder, Father.”

“So is yours,” Taeyong reminded.

“Don’t twist this back on me. I kill when I have to, not to make money. He profits off others’ suffering. And you know this. You knew, then, this entire time. Who I was talking about, who I was, and every single crime that was happening. Why didn’t you go to the press? And what, did you tell Johnny everything too?”

Taeyong took a deep breath. “I didn’t, because that’s not what I do. I’m a priest; you know where my allegiances lie. Anything said during sacrament of penance can’t go anywhere. Even if you killed 10 people, I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone. And you can’t bully me into doing something I don’t want to do. Didn’t work with Johnny, and it definitely won’t work with you,” Taeyong warned darkly. “Johnny is my family. It doesn’t matter that he never talks to me or that he hates me on a good day. He’s my family, and you have to know how important having one is.”

“Don’t use my family against me!” he shouted. “You can’t use sensitive information people told you in confidence like that. See, this,” Mark sputtered and pointed, “is why you can’t be trusted.”

Taeyong’s face grew long and solemn. “He’s my family, and I have to keep that connection alive.”

“You know there’s no walking out of this alive, right? You’re unstable, and if, if, I let you go, it’ll end up hurting the people I love.”

“Whatever you told me hasn’t gone to him. Whatever he told me in confidence hasn’t gone to you. There’s nothing I can say to help, but have faith in Him. He’ll protect you and me.”

“And Johnny? If I kill him, will you pretend to be impartial then, too?”

“Whatever’s coming his way is well-deserved. I’ve tried for years to rekindle things with him and help him out, but no, it hasn’t worked. Whatever happens, happens for a reason. He must have willed it that way.”

“I’ve told you I’m going to kill your brother, the kingpin, and you’re not going to do anything to warn him?”

Taeyong sighed beyond his years, as if dealing with a child. Mark felt even more angry at that.

“How dare you preach all that bullshit about wanting to be good? When I….I trusted you,” Mark said.

“I’m not perfect, Mark, but this is my personal life. It’s not for you to judge. There’s so much context you don’t have, so much you haven’t lived.” Mark hesitated at the raw pain in Taeyong’s voice.

“Don’t cross me,” he shook a finger at him dangerously. Taeyong held his breath carefully. He stalked out of the abandoned classroom, this time with the shadows nipping at his heels.

Taeyong waited for a beat, and then another yet another. 

As soon as Taeyong thought Mark was out of earshot, he reached for his phone and punched in the numbers frantically. “Oh, Johnny, pick up, pick up, pick up, I—”

And then faster than he could comprehend, there was a knife lodged in his chest and Mark Lee in his line of sight again, frowning from just a few meters away again. There was a disgusting squelch and a sound Taeyong could never unhear—the ragged, half-gasp of a dying man. With some horror, he realized it was his own.

“I warned you,” Mark snarled. His eyes were coal. “Even when I knew you were lying, I gave you a chance.” He bent down to pick up the phone and end the unconnected call. 

And there it was again: that darkness Taeyong had felt in him. That strange modal mixture of righteous rage and deep-seated bitterness and twisted pity. He couldn’t name it then, but he realized now that was what Mark’s darkness felt like, right as he was drowning in it all over again.

Only this time it was he who was on the receiving end of it. Only this time it was he who was dying. Only this time it was he who was dead.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Donghyuck lounged on his studio chaise, sipping a beer. It was one of those rare nights he’d set aside to be alone. The silence of domesticity was something precious that even he, an extrovert, needed. This wasn’t the space he felt most comfortable or energized in, but he needed it every now and then for perspective. It was a good place for him to think provided he wasn’t anxious. The contrast helped him evade complacency in his head.

He usually always played something on the TV or blasted music on his speaker to fuzz up the background noise. Usually whatever sports game, but this particular evening, it was the news.

“The Man in the Mask apprehended John Seo, a suspected kingpin of the local Triad gang last night. The vigilante has had a killing streak in the past, and authorities are baffled as to why this criminal was left alive and up to the criminal justice system. Every other person in the restaurant, which intel now suggests was part of a Triad ring, was found dead except for Seo. Seo is facing multiple charges of embezzlement, fraud, second-degree murder, as well as some 20 others under RICO. If convicted, he would serve life.”

Donghyuck blinked through the fizz in his beer, eyes, mind, the heat of his apartment. It wasn’t the vigilante. It was Mark. Mark had a killing spree. Mark had apprehended the Triad kingpin. Mark had left this one alive and up to the law. 

Context was key, and everything had shifted. He knew now his law partner was the vigilante, but he’d chosen to sit on the information until it became useful to him. There was nothing for Donghyuck to gain from tossing what little he knew into Mark’s face. He’d already gained enough to satisfy his curiosity. 

As for the rest, well, he’d leverage it to his benefit soon enough. It was fun to see him squirm.

“Babe?” he called. 

Jeno padded over and settled in next to him, having pulled a Corona for himself. He took a sip and kissed his cheek cutely. 

“How long have you known Mark’s the vigilante?” Donghyuck asked, tone neutral.

Jeno froze. “I...what?”

“How long, sweetheart?”

Jeno detached a bit from him to look at his face. Donghyuck’s deadly serious. “Months,” he whispered.

“Did he tell you that or did you deduce it?”

Jeno smirked just barely. “Neither. I vibed it.”

“Oooh, sexy.” 

Jeno gave him a proud eye-smile, and Donghyuck melted all over again. 

_I’m so lucky to have this life,_ he thought _._ He’d fight tooth and nail to protect it. In that aspect, he could empathize with Mark.

.

.

.

.

.

Yukhei hadn’t seen Mark since their disastrous fight. Or whatever that was. His life since then had been empty but fraught with paranoia. It reminded him of when he first went on the run, because he’d been scared to come home.

Kun had texted him after a few days. _Everything good?_

Yukhei tried to act normal. _yeah, just exercising gotta get those gains hahaha_

“Don’t worry about it,” was what Kun had told him back when they first met to calm his nerves. “You’re gonna be okay.” 

“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask for any of this,” Yukhei had said then. God, he was so stupid. 

He’d given reign over all the aspects of his life to these people without even realizing they were planning to kill him regardless. He was a ticking time bomb, and no one had bothered to fucking tell him. Yukhei was furious. He poured his empty time into learning how to defend himself, frequenting the local boxing ring and bulking up at the gym.

He wasn’t going down without a fight, he vowed. He didn’t really know who he’d be fighting, Mark or Kun or someone else, but it wasn’t going to be pretty. 

.

.

.

.

Mark ended up texting him weeks after they’d last spoke. _hey, I’m sorry. would you be down to talk in person?_

Yukhei sighed. As much as everything hurt, there were things he needed to say. Things he hadn’t thought of then. He’d had too much time to think about it.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“I’ve taken care of it,” Mark said.

“Hell does that mean?”

“Johnny isn’t coming after you anymore. The Feds caught on,” he said, eyes twinkling. 

Yukhei tried not to gape. He hadn’t imagined this at all. He had to sit back down on his couch to process. “I—Am I safe now?” he asked.

Mark smiled compassionately. “Sorta? You’re only safe until the next two heads of the snake regenerate. I’m sorry, Yukhei, but there’s always some part of you that will never be completely safe again.”

Yukhei jutted out his lower lip in a pout. “So practically, what does that mean for me?”

“You can return to your old life. Maybe not the same specific apartment building, but you can talk to your loved ones again. You can lead a somewhat normal life. They’ll always come back to either buy your silence or murder you into it. But on the bright side, you’ll be able to defend yourself.”

Yukhei did a full body _huh?_ “How did you know I’ve been learning boxing?”

Mark shook his head slowly, fondly. “I meant your superpower. The guns click around you. I’ve seen it happen, what, twice already? And you said it happened before too, when you first fled the restaurant. Three isn’t a coincidence,” Mark reasoned.

Yukhei thought back. Guns had failed to fire when he fled the restaurant, when he first saw Mark, when they eavesdropped at the port, and— “Wait. Four. The fake assassination attempt Kun’s people put out on me. It’s happened four times,” Yukhei said.

Mark’s eyes sparkled. “It’s a defensive power. Not as strong as it could be given practice, of course. But the shield at its bare minimum protects you. You’re so much safer than you think. 

“And you can project too. That’s how I was able to survive the night we met. Why else would Johnny’s gun click? The cartridge had slid in perfectly.”

“So what, I’m safe if someone tries to shoot me? What about knives and other stuff?”

Mark shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ll have to figure the specifics of it out, but I agreed you should know. I was in the wrong for trying to censor what you could handle about your own life. So I’m giving you this. You’re safer than you think. You don’t need me to protect you; you can live your life the way you want it,” Mark promised.

Yukhei was at a loss for words. He didn’t know how to respond.

This pressure on his shoulders had just been lifted that he never expected. He had spent long living under this rock of fear while on the run that he almost didn’t know how to function without that undercurrent to each of his decisions. Yukhei scrabbled for something to hold onto but was left as had become a habit with just Mark as his tether. And really, what else did he need?

“I don’t even know where to start?” he admitted honestly. “Fuck, I had this all planned out—what all I wanted to say and shit—and now when I see you, it just all melts away. I’m sorry for saying what I said. I just, fuck, said it in the heat of the moment, and I know that doesn’t make it better, but I wasn’t thinking straight. And I was angry that I didn’t realize about the program earlier, because there were so many red flags, looking back. I took it out on you, which was unfair. So I’m sorry for that,” Yukhei said in a low, sincere voice. 

Mark looked at him. He’d been doing so since Yukhei got here, but he hadn’t stopped. Yukhei felt bare under his gaze, but also so incredibly whole. Yukhei was speaking words, but it wasn’t like Mark was believing him from just those. Even if he could hear the difference, he still peered into his soul, the one that came with chips and dents and love and love and love. 

Yukhei cleared his throat, and Mark’s eyelashes fluttered prettily. “It’s okay. I know now what you meant,” he said softly, gently. “I’m sorry for shutting you down so quickly.”

He looked away under the intensity of his eyes and gulped. “Man, I don’t even know where to start. I don’t really have a place to live anymore. I moved for the program, and my lease expired on the other place,” he was just spitballing at this point. Yukhei did not know how to deal with the inside of him that was singing, “He knows!” 

“You can stay with me, if you want.”

“For the night? Thank you, that’s really generous of you.”

“No, like, for as long as you need.”

Yukhei paused with his mouth open. “Oh my god, you’re serious?”

Mark nodded, “Yeah, man.”

“I would love that,” Yukhei said, beaming. 

Mark frowned, though. “Your heart’s beating faster. Are you lying?”

“No, I’m just in love with you and that’s why, you fool.”

 _Oh._ He had gone there. Mark’s eyes widened, and Yukhei backpedaled instantly. “I understand if you want to take back your offer to be roommates and stuff since it would be awkward—”

“No!” Mark interrupted loudly. And then, quieter: “No, no, it’s um, okay. I, uh, like you too,” he blushed. Because sometimes, it really was that simple. 

“Dope,” Yukhei said and instantly felt lame. “Haha, bro,” he added for emphasis. Dear God, he was spiraling. 

Mark choked out a peal of laughter. “Are you friendzoning me after telling me you like me?”

“I think my brain is a little fried by how much I like you. Forgive me. This will probably happen again,” he said. 

Mark giggled again like a stream of bubbles, and Yukhei felt like catching one and holding it forever in his hands. “Yeah, you’re gonna be a fun roommate,” he said with a smile. 

Yukhei sputtered.“Oh my god, they were roommates….” he trailed off.

“Shut up!”

Yukhei cracked up with a hand on his stomach, then paused. “Wait, can roommates even fuck? Doesn’t that break the bro code?”

“That’s not what the bro code is hahaha. I can’t not fuck myself, as much as I have tried.”

“Can I watch?” Yukhei shot back, faster than his brain could filter.

Mark shrieked and turned beet red. 

And they lived happily fucking ever fucking after fucking. No, seriously.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY gonna mark this as complete now bc ^^ is technically the ending,
> 
> but i have a fluffy epilogue halfway done so stay tuned for that if you'd like~
> 
> thanks for reading and sticking thru this with me!!


	9. Epilogue

“Babe, I’m home,” Yukhei called. 

He hung up his coat, kicked off his boots, and headed to see his soulmate, the couch. Mark was nice, but so was Mark’s couch. She was a cerulean beauty from IKEA, complete with ramen stains and random scratches though they didn’t own any pets. Yukhei had also pasted googly eyes on the back in a half-hearted callback to college, but now they just reminded him of the emoji, which was how he felt about Mark. Quite often. 

Mark was in the kitchen, flittering about like a fairy. He made a hum of assent but didn’t otherwise react. 

The TV had already been playing something, so Yukhei juggled his attention between that and then scrolling on his phone. And then Mark came back to their living room, carrying something in both his hands and then setting it down on their coffee table, commanding his full attention.

“Happy birthday,” Mark said sweetly. 

Yukhei’s stomach fluttered as he looked at the brick-shaped mess. “Aww, you tried to bake a cake.”

“No, I tried to decorate one and not eat it,” Mark clarified. 

“I…adore you. I really do,” Yukhei said earnestly.

Mark shrugged like it was nothing, but his smile betrayed the grounded, concentrated warmth rooted in the pit of his stomach, as he slid in next to Yukhei’s side. 

Yukhei leaned in for a kiss. For all the jokes they made, they hadn’t really fucked yet. Which was amazing, considering Yukhei was Yukhei. But he just, suddenly didn’t care about any of it. Mark tasted sweet, just faint enough like frosting that it felt like he was chasing a fucking dream.

“Hey,” Yukhei said, in a serious tone, drawing back. At the sight of Mark’s puffy, spit-covered lips, his dick twitched, and Yukhei cursed at the betrayal. “Do you wanna spend the night? I gotta ask my roommate first, but I’d really love it you could—”

“Oh my god,” screeched Mark, and Yukhei immediately dissolved into a grin. “You’re ridiculous. I can’t stand you!” Mark tackled him so he went from sitting to just starfishing with Mark leering just over him on his hands and knees.

Yukhei scrunched his nose up at him, still so horribly fond. “Yeah, yeah.”

.

.

.

.

“It’s been forever, Yukhei,” Yuqi sighed. “What the hell happened? You kinda just dropped off the face of the Earth.”

Yukhei smirked lopsidedly but it didn’t have any of the usual vigor. He’d been through so much, the full reality of which he could never, ever tell his friends. He told them an abridged story of how he had to take care of a terminally ill friend in a different part of town and got incredibly swamped with work. It was a shitty excuse but also fit the kind of shitty that Yukhei was, so it was believable. 

“Oh, by the way, we also invited our other friends here. They just moved to town, so we’ve been showing them the ropes and stuff.”

Yukhei nodded warmly. “Sure,” he grinned, always having been one to agree the more, the merrier. 

Besides, he could dare the newbies into drinking some of their staple dares. Always a fun time. 

Yuqi and Renjun chatted a bit about everything and nothing with him. Neighborhood gossip, as it were, would survive the apocalypse when it came to public need. 

The old lady across Yukhei’s old apartment, Mrs. Kim, had finally bit the dust. They retired the 21 bus line and the new one was garbage, according to Yuqi. Their favorite restaurant had stayed intact over the season, but both places on either side of it had been forced into liquidation. 

The bell at the restaurant rang, and Renjun stood up a bit across from him. He couldn’t really see the door, so he didn’t bother moving until their friends were waved over, and a new presence was—wait, no,  _ two  _ new presences were—at his side. He looked up to see the familiar, disinterested face of—

“Yukhei, meet Chenle and Jisung,” Yuqi introduced. 

Yukhei tried not to gasp. 

Chenle. The kid that owned the grocery store. The kid that was way too young to be in charge of things and yet—had access to so much. 

The man at his side was a bit taller than Chenle, probably around Yukhei’s own height, looking incredibly mousy but also so very present and capable for his age. 

“Jisung works at Pearson-Specter, and Chenle does something with the Stock Exchange. They’re good people,” Renjun cut in.

Chenle laughed, a bright peal of laughter. “Nice to meet you, Yukhei.”

Yukhei’s stomach dropped out from underneath him. 

He’d been fucking around with the Triad, he almost forgot as his brain struggle to catch up. Yukhei was looking at the actual head of the branch family in Hell’s Kitchen.

.

.

.

.

.

It really was a clever scam, Kun had to admit. Sure, it wasn’t as fast as gutting the liabilities, dumping the bodies in the Hudson, and moving on, but it was a long game. Offer the liability the false security and smoothly transition them out of their current life so no one from their old life could raise alarm.

Patience was a virtue, and Kun savored it.

He wasn’t limited to the whims of any one mafia. He’d juggled the Yakuza’s loose ends with the Triad’s and the Irish Mob’s and the Russians’, too. The Chinese Triads in Hell’s Kitchen had told him to take care of Wong Yukhei, so he did. And Johnny had been the one asking. A brother was asking; he respected him enough to not say no.

He made sure Yukhei was well-fed, secure, and safe. The last thing anyone wanted was the law to get involved. Never mind that they all had moles there too, but involving them would be damage control. Kun’s business never let it get that far. He operated on the trust and fear of others.

He just had to trust them not to give him up. He had made an example of the one that had, but still. High-risk, high-reward. It was his favorite game.

Wait. Kun stopped, focusing in on a shadow he’d seen move in the warehouse he was working in. “Hello? Who’s there? Fucking show yourself.”

The man tsked. “I thought I’d get more respect than that,” he said as he drew nearer to the light. Kun gasped as he recognized the mask. 

“The fuck are you doing here?” he barked out at the vigilante. 

“Say hello to Taeyong for me,” he spat.

Kun whirled. How did he know Taeyong? 

Pain erupted from his back; something with a definite crunch. Kun sank to his knees unwittingly. 

The vigilante dragged a silver baseball bat on the floor around him lazily. “Did you just hit me, you freak?” Kun gasped.

The vigilante smiled pitilessly, and he shivered. “Don’t worry, I’m gonna sit here and wait, because you deserve no less.” He swung painfully hard at Kun’s left shoulder blade thrice. 

Kun cried out from the pain, falling to the floor on his back. Kun garbled, struggling for words. His body was already going into shock. 

“I’ll probably watch ] while I wait. Donghyuck and I are so invested in it, even though we’re lawyers and have to point and laugh. We work hard the decent and original way; ”

“Mark Lee? You’re the lawyers the kingpin bribed?”

The vigilante tutted. “It’s only a bribe if you accept it. And as I’m sure you know, it’s only a felony if you get caught.” 

He scrambled to think of something, anything, some way to get out of this. His galaxy brain was flickering away. What the hell could he use to negotiate?

Mark kneeled and punched him in the face. When he came to, the taste of iron filled his mouth. His nose was definitely broken and bleeding. 

“Don’t think I didn’t find out you were the one who hired Hendery and Yangyang. That was risky, especially since I’d connected you and Johnny.”

Kun scoffed and choked a little on the blood in his mouth. “You think Johnny was king? Not a chance in hell. Johnny was never a capo. His side was only looped in because his mother had been part of the original branch family. The only thing he controlled was physically banking the reserve money. We would never let him near anything that important. Oh, please.”

Mark stumbled back a bit, hands letting go of Kun’s lapels. Kun spat blood to his left savagely. He placed a boot on the junction of Kun’s arm and body. He pressed and pain fled to Kun’s shoulder so acute he gasped.

“What’s the family name? For the one here in Hell’s Kitchen?” he hissed out.

Kun blinked, his expression smoothing a bit despite the pain. Mark Lee didn’t know shit; how lovely he could talk his way out. “They’re constantly having turf wars with the Chinatown gangs, so they aren’t even always active—”

“The name?” he pressed on.

Kun shook his head, but Mark applied more pressure to the wounded arm. His vision was greying out into square tessellations. “Zhong,” he whispered, giving in. “The Zhongs are the actually immigrated triad group. You’ve been killing all the wrong people,” he sneered.

Mark released his foot, but he didn’t look satisfied. Kun grappled for air, breathing in big chunks to get the oxygen back to his brain. “Not me, I think,” Mark cocked his head and furrowed his brows. “I never killed anyone who didn’t fail me first. You, on the other hand, deceived Yukhei and so many others first.”

“Who the hell are you?” Kun gawked at him. How did he know so much?

Mark’s face was impassive, mouth set in a grim smile. “Daredevil,” he said with a sigh, carrying the cringiest newspaper name known to man.

The last thing he saw before fading into black was the vague shape of Mark Lee over him, smiling like Lucifer must have when he first fell and crowned himself king.

To this, only he bore witness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END, no fr
> 
> thanks for sticking w me thru this <3
> 
> pls leave a comment, it would make my day :(


End file.
